


A Glittering Instrument

by regencysnuffboxes (malicegeres)



Series: The Melanie Crowley Cinematic Universe [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, Discussion of Abortion, Fluff and Angst, Historical, Kid Fic, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-09-16 06:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 58,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malicegeres/pseuds/regencysnuffboxes
Summary: "Look at Satan. Created an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel... No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me."Crowley has a daughter, and through the centuries she makes him and Aziraphale question everything about themselves, each other, and their place in the world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So writing a human AU got me thinking about Crowley and who he is without the expectations that come with being a demon or even an angel. A couple of brain tangents led to me picturing him living vicariously through a kid who's immortal, too, but just gets to live as herself. And what's a Good Omens kidfic if Aziraphale isn't also dad and also dealing with tough existential questions? Also I love history so this is my chance to be deeply self-indulgent. Enjoy!

_“But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.” —_ John Steinbeck, _East of Eden_

_**France, 1386** _

The Black Death had put rather a damper on everything Crowley tried to do for the latter half of this century. Oh, there were things going on, but it was hard for him to get much of a foothold on any particular project when people were dropping like flies. It was hard for him to have much fun, either, since all his friends kept getting sick and dying on him and it would have been unbecoming of a demon to heal all of them.

But he was doing fine. He'd spent most of the century in France overseeing the war with England, and France was an excellent source of French wine so that he wouldn't notice the French people around him disappearing. It was a perfect way to ride out the century, at least until Guillaume.

Guillaume de Saint-Cirq was beautiful. It was winter when they met, and his smile alone could make him feel the warmth of Eden’s sun. They often went hunting together, just the two of them. If most of the time they came back from the woods empty-handed, well, no one said anything—least of all Guillaume’s wife Marionette, who with three sons already was happy to let her husband do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted. Sometimes she even joined them on their outings when they weren't preoccupied with each other, becoming a fast friend to Crowley.

In the back of his mind he knew it was probably a bad idea to let himself get this close to humans, especially now, but he'd decided he was done letting that old bastard Death ruin his century. And he didn’t love Guillaume, of course; it just wasn’t something demons _did_ , and it would be stupid to fall in love with something as fleeting as a human being besides.

But their second winter together, when the plague took him so quickly Crowley didn’t hear about it until it was too late, he found himself so consumed with grief couldn’t bring himself to leave his chambers for a week. They disposed of the body so quickly that Eden's sun wasn’t even given a proper funeral to send him off.

The third night after Guillaume passed, Marionette came to Crowley’s chambers with a bottle of strong wine. She and her husband hadn’t felt anything romantic for each other, but he had been her best friend. Her partner. With so much panic in the palace, it felt to her as though she and Crowley were the only ones grieving him properly. Crowley had nodded when she said this, filling their bottle while she wasn't looking so neither of them would have to face that reality sober. They went on like that, swapping stories and toasting Guillaume’s memory, until finally they ran out of things to say and the lonely silence was too much to bear.

She kissed him, then. She wasn’t the sun, but she was soft and warm and _alive_ and that was what Crowley needed. In the moment, he hoped he was what she needed, too. He fell asleep with her in his arms, too drunk to remember to sober up.

The next morning, he awoke with a splitting headache and a vague memory of skin against skin. The woman in his arms was all the confirmation he needed that he’d likely made a huge mistake. He’d been with women before, but he’d always been careful. It was bad enough being the reason every human who ever gave birth had to suffer while they did it, and he had no desire to be the individual cause of a birth on top of that. Plus he hadn't forgotten the Flood that Heaven had sent to wipe out the nephilim.

He tried to tell himself it would be alright, that humans had sex all the time without a baby coming of it. It was his first slip-up in millennia and he couldn’t be _that_ unlucky, could he?

In February, Marionette pulled him aside and told him.

“You’re sssss- positive?” he asked, taking special care that the Z sound in ‘positive’ remained a Z. He could hardly breathe.

She nodded. “It was close enough to Guillaume’s death, I can pass it off as his, but you’re my friend so I wanted you to know.” Her brow furrowed. “Are you alright? You don’t look well, Antoine.”

“I’m fine," he said. He pressed on. "Look, you don’t have to have it. I know there's a woman in the village who has herbs for this sort of thing.”

Marionette took a step back. “Why wouldn’t I have it? I just told you my plan. You don’t have to do anything, I can tell it that Guillaume was the father.”

He took her hands and pulled her forward. “Marionette, believe me, you do _not_ want to have that baby.”

She pulled her hands away. “What is wrong with you, Antoine?”

Marionette had always politely avoided asking about the dark-colored spectacles he wore, just as Guillaume had. He allowed rumors to spread that he’d been in an accident of some sort that had spared his vision but left the area around his eyes unsightly.

Now, seeing no other option, he took his spectacles off. He cringed as she stared at him, digested what she was seeing, and began to scream.

—

Marionette disappeared from court shortly after and Crowley followed suit before any rumors about him managed to spread. It took him much longer than he would have liked, but after months of searching he learned that she was in the process of dedicating herself to the Church as a nun. When he finally found the convent where she lived, he changed into a snake and crawled up to her window to discover that her belly was round with child. She probably had only a few weeks to go. From what he could gather, the sisters were fully aware of her plight. It seemed her attempts to abort the pregnancy had failed, and so on the day the child was born they intended to drown it.

Commandeering the nun carrying the child to the well was easy enough. He simply stood in her path, met her eyes, snapped his fingers, and once he had the child in his arms informed the woman that in thirty seconds she would remember only that she’d successfully drowned the baby in the well. He hoped she felt bloody well good about it, too.

They hadn’t even cleaned the kid off, let alone clothed her in more than a blanket. Once he was a safe distance into the woods, he waved a hand and the child was spotless. When he finally got her to stop crying she stared up at him with bright yellow eyes, their pupils slits. They were slightly less snakelike than Crowley's, the irises ending where a human's might instead of dominating the whites, but there was no question who her father was.

“That figures,” he grumbled to himself. Then he waved his hand again and she was swaddled tight in her blanket. “Right, then. What the hell am I going to do with you?”

The city of Nice wasn’t far from the convent, and wasn’t hard to find a beggar woman with toddler at her side and a baby on her breast who agreed to be a wet nurse and not to ask questions about his dark spectacles or the little girl's eyes. She was wary, but she was desperate and he was offering her instant lodging and a handsome wage in exchange for her tolerance and discretion.

Crowley named her Melanie, and she became his new favorite distraction from everything going wrong in the world. In the blink of an eye—which was admittedly not a frequent thing for Crowley—she went from a screaming, wrinkled animal to something like an intelligent person. Those yellow eyes of hers sparked with intelligence and curiosity, and Crowley found himself forgetting all sense of dignity as she made her first attempts at talking. They'd echo sounds like "ba" and "ga" at each other for minutes at a time, and when she learned to laugh? Good Go—Goodne— Gosh. He'd heard babies' laughter before, even been the cause of it a couple of times, but he'd never felt anything like the joy he felt when it was his kid laughing.

He loved every second of Melanie despite the fact that every step she took toward full personhood simultaneously filled him with dread. Nephilim weren’t supposed to exist anymore; that had been the whole point of the Flood. If Hell found out about her she’d be lucky if the worst thing they did was make her work for them, and if Heaven found out… Well. That didn’t bear thinking about.

And that was why he didn't tell Aziraphale. It felt wrong not to, but every time he thought of doing it he looked at his daughter and remembered the Flood. The Arrangement was a few centuries old at this point and he really did trust the angel with his life, but it wasn't just his life he had to worry about anymore.

Because he really would hate to lose the little bugger. When she learned to walk and talk she toddled around on her sausage link legs calling, “Papa! Papa!” and giggling like she wasn’t living through the worst century in history and her father wasn't the Devil's footsoldier on Earth. She made him feel the best he had all century. He knew he could probably make a case to Hell for making her a lower demon of sorts, but he couldn't imagine the tiny thing who relied on him for everything in Hell. It felt wrong on a level even he wasn't willing to stoop to.

That wasn't to say that she didn't have a dark streak of her own. The kid was _weird_. When she was five, she was obsessed with loups garoux, the terrifying monster beloved by French mothers trying to frighten their children in those days. She constantly badgered her nursemaid for stories, and when she got those stories she couldn’t sleep and insisted on spending the rest of the night in her father’s chambers.

He didn’t need the sleep, but it got annoying enough that he carried her back to her own bed and told her in no uncertain terms that she was not allowed back, and loups garoux weren’t real.

Then she began to cry, and he, at the end of his rope, implored her, “How do I make you stop? There's nothing to be afraid of. Even if they did exist, I’m scarier than any bloody werewolf.”

“N-no you’re not,” she wailed. “Loups garoux have big, sharp teeth for eating little girls who don’t behave.”

He got an idea and smiled. “What, like this?” he asked, shifting the shape of his teeth into long, sharp fangs and baring them for her.

Melanie stopped crying and gasped. “Are you a loup garou?” she whispered, looking as intrigued as she was frightened.

“What? No," he scoffed, feeling more offended than he ought to. "Do I look like a wolf to you?”

She tilted her head. “Chat garou?”

He laughed. “Now you're being silly. I'm a demon, I've told you.”

Melanie looked unimpressed. "You're not a very scary demon."

"Well, you wouldn't think so. I'm not trying to scare _you_."

"All I see is my papa with sharper teeth," she said, crossing her arms. She didn't even look frightened anymore, the little shit. "That's not going to scare a loup garou."

"Aren't you just the little critic?" he mumbled, but then he remembered what he was there for. She was being annoying now, but he'd blow out the candles and leave the room and the cycle would begin all over again. He sighed. "What if I show you what it looks like when I'm actually trying to be scary?"

She furrowed her brow thoughtfully, and then she nodded.

"Now remember, it's still just me. You've got nothing to be frightened of, no matter how I look."

"Okay," she said, her elven little features set with determination.

"Okay," Crowley repeated, taking a nervous a step back from the bed. He considered the form he normally took to frighten humans, deciding which bits to water down so his daughter wouldn't be traumatized, and then he shifted into something slightly less _dreadful_ than usual.

Melanie's little forehead folded like an accordion as her eyebrows raised as high as they could go. "Wow," she whispered, eyes wide.

He changed back, not wanting to stay in that form for too long. "Satisfied?"

Her expression didn't change. "You can just do that whenever you want?"

"When it's useful," he hedged. "It isn't what I actually-"

"That's so cool!"

"I- What?"

She grinned. "Is that the only thing you can turn into?"

"No," he said, a smile creeping over his face. "I’ve got a few things I’m pretty good at."

"Show me!"

He laughed and pulled her blankets up to her chest, tucking her securely. "In the morning. Right now you need to sleep. I'll keep an ear out for any howling, alright?"

She smiled and settled in against her pillow. "Okay."

They said goodnight, and he rode the high of his kid seeing him at his most demonic and calling him cool for weeks. He’d continue to think back on it, and on those easy days in Nice, centuries later when she’d been grown longer than most empires lasted.

In the end it was the nursemaid, Claudette, who did their easy days in. Crowley had learned millennia ago that life was better if he treated his help with dignity and respect, but in stupid, demonic fashion he forgot to take religion into account as potential threat. He knew Claudette suspected what he was and feared him on some level, but she was always good to Melanie so he didn’t think it would be a problem.

Then one night Melanie came to him in tears.

He groaned, thinking it was another one of Claudette’s stories keeping her awake. “Melanie, what have I told you about staying in bed?”

She climbed into the bed, ignoring him. Her eyes were puffy, as though she’d been crying for a while. This wasn’t just about a scary story.

“Hey, hey,” he said, scooting to make room for her. “What is it?”

She looked down, like she didn’t want to admit why she was crying.

Silently, he reached over and pushed a tear-soaked lock of hair away from her cheek. He tucked it behind her ear.

She looked up. “Papa, do you really serve the Devil?”

He winced. He’d never hidden what he was from her, but it wasn’t exactly easy to broach the subject of what that meant. Still, she’d asked him a direct question. He couldn’t just lie, especially as he realized he was taking way too long to answer and she’d know he was lying anyway. So, he changed the subject. “Who told you that?”

“Claudette asked me. I said you were a demon, because you’ve said that, but I told her I didn’t know and she said that all demons serve the Devil.” She met his eyes desperately. “Do you?”

“Yes, I do,” he said, seeing no alternative.

She took a deep breath. “Why?”

“‘Why’?” he repeated. “Because… well, that’s what a demon _is_. I can’t do anything else.”

Melanie looked confused.

Sighing, Crowley picked her up and pulled her into his lap. “Look, it's like this. I used to be an angel. There was a war up in Heaven, with Lucifer leading the charge, and a lot of angels joined him for all sorts of reasons. I joined because, I don’t know, all my friends were and I had more than a few questions about the way things were being run in Heaven. It was a mistake, and we were punished by being cast into Hell. And since Lucifer—the Devil—had been our leader in Heaven, he took charge of Hell and… well, here I am.”

She was quiet for a long time, staring out into the darkness. “You were an angel?”

He tried to think of something to say about it, something to make him sound less sad or at least to make Melanie feel better about it. Finally he replied, "Yeah."

Melanie frowned. “What does that make me?”

Crowley took a deep breath, trying to decide how much to tell her about the Nephilim.

He was clearly taking too long again because Melanie continued, “Do I have to serve the Devil?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said without hesitation. Up to that moment he hadn't really made a decision on the matter, but with his daughter asking him directly the choice was obvious. “You don’t serve anyone, not Heaven and certainly not Hell. Whatever else you are, you’re human and that’s your birthright.”

Being Crowley’s daughter, her questions were endless. By the time she fell asleep dawn was beginning to creep over the horizon and Crowley felt ten tons lighter.

Just before falling asleep she asked, “Papa?”

“Hm?”

“Did you love my maman?”

He’d reached out and stroked her long, dark hair. “Demons don’t really _do_ love, Melanie.”

“But you love me,” she’d pointed out matter-of-factly.

He didn't correct her. What sort of father would he be if he did?

The next afternoon, he found a letter on his desk that was addressed to him in prim, careful handwriting. It was dated that day, and had apparently crossed the English channel and the whole of France within hours.

_Crowley,_

_Have received word of a child of infernal parentage in France. It was reported in prayer by the child’s nursemaid. Please inform me if you know anything._

_-A_

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, he’d found out. _Shit_. He was going to kill Crowley. Hell, he might kill Melanie.

He'd thought it mostly in jest, but the idea chilled him.

Crowley really did trust Aziraphale. They’d been officially trusting each other for almost four centuries, now, and they’d trusted each other under the table for even longer. But how many times had Aziraphale explained to Crowley that he didn’t disobey orders? Crowley never believed him, of course, but this was Melanie’s life he was risking. He combed his long memory, searching for something that might-

The sword. Aziraphale had given his sword to the humans and lied to God’s face about it. Sure, he’d caught H—been chewed out for it, but if Crowley did what he did best surely Aziraphale would find a way around this whole thing.

He found Melanie in the garden and told her they were going to visit a friend of his in England. Melanie didn’t know much about England, but she was excited to leave Nice for the first time and meet a new friend. He didn’t tell her that they likely wouldn’t be returning, but he made arrangements for Claudette and her children. She'd been good to his daughter, even if she'd ruined everything in the end.

It was only when Crowley was packing his things that he let himself consider the worst case scenario. He found a dagger—one he’d picked up in Constantinople a few centuries back, sharp and deadly but incapable of harming more than the physical body—and hid it in his boot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Aziraphale was going to kill Crowley._

_Aziraphale,_

_Situation best explained in person. Will be in London in three days’ time. Have to travel by ship but will speed things along._

_-C_

Aziraphale was going to kill Crowley. Not literally, of course. He was angry, but murder would be a bit of an overreaction even if he probably _should_ kill him.

They’d both been on Earth when word got out about the Flood. Both had been recalled to their sides just in time, and everyone including the Nephilim had drowned. Noah and his family were some of the few humans left who didn’t have angelic blood in their veins, and so they were the ones chosen to start the Earth anew. Aziraphale was _not_ starting again, not even for Crowley.

He was having trouble wrapping his head around Crowley’s part in it. That he'd taken part in the activities necessary to create a child wasn't surprising to Aziraphale, but this was _Crowley_. Even as angels and demons alike sowed their overpowered wild oats with reckless abandon, he took every precaution not to. And he’d _kept_ the blessed thing. Even the angels hadn’t kept the children they fathered.

The real grain of sand in the oyster shell of Aziraphale’s mind, though, was the girl. She was the child of a demon and was likely of infernal nature herself, but someone who knew what she was had prayed for her. And it wasn’t a fearful prayer, either; she prayed for the girl the way she prayed when she was worried for her own two children. It brought up questions Aziraphale didn't want to know the answers to.

“Ineffable,” he muttered to himself, reading Crowley’s note again. Maybe he was being dramatic. It didn’t _say_ it was his child.

He repeated that last thought to himself until the moment he was answering the door, greeted by a lean, dark, sharp-faced man whose eyes were covered with black quartz spectacles and a lean, dark, sharp-faced little girl whose eyes were covered with a veil.

Aziraphale strained his mind for one last desperate explanation, but then the little girl turned to Crowley and opened her mouth.

“Papa, c’est pas un ange, c’est un grand-pére!"

To his credit, Crowley had the decency to look embarrassed, but it did little to quell Aziraphale’s rage.

“You—" he started.

"Aziraphale, c'est un plaisir de te revoir!” Crowley interrupted, plastering a wooden grin to his face and inclining his head toward the child at his side. Continuing in French, he said, “Melanie, this is Aziraphale. Aziraphale, meet Melanie.”

Aziraphale kept his jaw set tight. He didn't trust himself to speak.

“Angel, come on," said Crowley in English, his face serious. "I'm trying not to let on to her. I need your help.

Aziraphale crossed his arms and stood strong like his doorway was the Eastern Gate of Eden. "You need my help," he repeated.

Crowley dropped all pretense at friendliness. “Jussssst let us in, angel.”

The small figure next to him stared up through her veil. She took a step toward her father, and then she shuffled herself so that she was a little behind him.

Aziraphale averted his eyes from her and glowered at Crowley, stepping wordlessly aside to let them in. As soon as they were inside, he slammed the door shut. He drew himself to his full height and rounded on him.

“How could you let this happen?” he demanded, poking his finger into his chest leaning down so that their noses were nearly touching.

Crowley let go of the girl's hand and stepped back, his hands held out in supplication as he stared up at him. “Hear me out, angel.”

“No, _you_ hear _me_ out,” said Aziraphale, continuing forward. “You’ve put _everything_ we’ve built here, everything _humanity’s_ built, in danger.” They hit the wall, and Aziraphale drew himself even taller. “If you-“

Crowley wasn’t looking at him anymore. Aziraphale followed his gaze and saw that he was looking at the girl. The top half of her face was covered so he couldn’t quite make out her expression, but the tense set of her shoulders and the tears running down her cheeks told him everything he needed to know.

He looked at Crowley and let out a big, fake laugh. “You didn’t warn the girl about our little game?” he scolded him in French. He stepped back and let him go.

Crowley slumped against the wall, his mind visibly halting as it tried to switch gears from fight-or-flight to something that could comfort the child. “Ah. Y-yeah. Game. Ha! You ssssss- You really got me!”

"Papa, you're hissing,” the girl protested.

Aziraphale winced. “Best let me do the talking, my dear," he said quietly in English. He approached the child cautiously. “There, there, mademoiselle.”

She took a step back.

“Oh, come now, we were only playing.”Aziraphale walked to her and crouched to her eye level. “Melanie, was it?”

She nodded, her expression unreadable under the veil.

“It’s lovely to meet you. Would you like, er…?” He looked back at Crowley, who was fixing his hat. “What does she like?”

“Maybe get her dad a bloody drink,” Crowley mumbled, looking ill. He stood up and addressed the girl. “It’ssssss alright, kid, Papa’ssssss jussssst exccccited. From the game.”

She sniffed and pulled off her veil, revealing two teary yellow eyes with unsettling narrow pupils. She wiped them on her sleeve.

Aziraphale’s anger rose in his throat again upon seeing her eyes, but he swallowed it and smiled for the sake of the child. “I hate to be abrupt, my girl, but your father and I have some business we need to discuss. Perhaps you could, er…?” He looked helplessly at Crowley.

Crowley sighed and put down the sack full of Melanie’s things. He reached in and pulled out a doll, handing it to her. “Down that corridor there’s a door out to the courtyard,” he told her, talking carefully around what would be S’s in French. “It’s got a garden you can play in. Aziraphale and I will be by a window upstairs, so I’ll be right there watching you.”

Melanie looked up at Crowley, then at Aziraphale, then back at Crowley. Irritation and doubt were written all over her face underneath the fear. But she took the doll and nodded, heading out to the garden without another word.

“Right,” said Aziraphale. “I think I could use a drink as well.”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t the sort of drinking they’d become accustomed to doing together. Aziraphale found his mind drifting back to Earth’s early days, back when humans had only just learned about fermentation and he and Crowley still pretended to be enemies. They used to drink with one eye on their glasses and the other on each other, staying just this side of sober in case they needed to be quick in a fight. It hadn't felt so bad back then, but only because it was the most friendly they'd ever been with each other. Now, it was just painful.

They were upstairs in Aziraphale’s library, which had a good view of the courtyard. Crowley rotated between looking at his goblet and looking out at his daughter digging a trench in the dirt with a stick, chattering away to the doll sitting at her side. He didn’t look at Aziraphale.

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale when he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

His head snapped to attention.

Aziraphale sighed. “How did this happen?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “I hope I don’t have to explain _that_ to you, angel.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve never—and you _kept_ her.”

“What else was I going to do?" He took a sip of his wine and returned to watching the little girl play.

"Doesn't she have a mother?"

"Yes," said Crowley dryly. "She was going to have her drowned."

“Then you should have let her,” Aziraphale snapped.

Crowley froze.

His stomach immediately seized with regret, but he was angry with Crowley and, well, Heaven seemed to agree with him. “Her existence puts the whole world at risk of drowning,” he pressed on. “For goodness' sake, you’re a demon. It should have been easy for you.”

He turned his head slowly. “Easy?”

Aziraphale hesitated, his guilt growing stronger. “Well, er. What I mean is-“

“Would it have been easy for you, _angel?_ ”

He swallowed.

Crowley furrowed his brow, and then he sat back and laughed mirthlessly. “I knew it. I bloody well knew it. Ssssssso those are your orders?”

“I don’t want to do it, my dear,” said Aziraphale quietly, “but I haven’t got a choice.”

Crowley took a long swig of his drink. Aziraphale had been looking at Crowley’s face long enough to know he was closing his eyes under his spectacles as he took several deep breaths. “You have got a choice,” he said, his voice straining with the effort to keep his speech under control. “You’re just too much of a coward to risk doing what's right instead of what's good if it might cost you anything.”

 _That_ was new. Crowley had exchanged barbs with Aziraphale about each other’s sides, each other’s tastes and levels of engagement with culture, even had a few rousing arguments about morality, but there had certain familiarity underneath it. If it had been with anyone but Crowley, Aziraphale would even have called it love—in the most neutral sense of the term, of course.

There was no love behind what he had just said. Crowley was guilty of plenty of sins—gluttony and sloth were big ones, and lust was obviously what had gotten them into their current predicament—but he wasn’t wrathful. He’d seen Crowley upset more than enough in five and a half millennia, but Aziraphale could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Crowley truly angry. Rarely, if ever, had that anger been at him. He'd been angry in his direction, sure, he’d taken his anger at Heaven out on Aziraphale a time or two, but he couldn't remember a time it had just been at him.

He tore his gaze from Crowley and looked out the window at the child. She was surrounding her trench with stones, forming a rudimentary wall. She paused her work, craning her neck over the trench and talking cheerfully to the doll, or to herself, or perhaps to some bug or other she'd found in there. It was sweet. Not demonic in the least.

It occurred to Aziraphale then that there had been love in what Crowley had said; it just hadn’t been for him.

 _No._ He pushed the thought back into the deep pit it had sprung from in his mind. Crowley was a demon. He either had an ulterior motive or had taken to the girl as one might a stray cat, but he wasn't a human father and Aziraphale needed to remember that.

“What's Hell got to say about her?” he asked, trying a different tack.

Crowley took another sip of his wine. "Hell doesn't know."

"What?"

His lip curled with distaste. "Why would I tell them?"

"Because it's your job!" Aziraphale sputtered. "Wouldn't they want to know?"

He gestured out the window. "Look at her, angel. Does she look like demon material to you?"

"She's got your eyes, Crowley."

"So what? She's got a lot of my features. Some of her mum's, too. That's how kids work."

"Regardless," said Aziraphale, his voice rising, "I don't understand why you've kept her if you haven't got any plans for her."

"She’s my daughter!” Crowley shouted loudly enough that the girl looked up. He winced, put on a smile, and gave a little wave before turning back to Aziraphale and fixing him with a glare that could freeze a hot spring. "As we've already discussed, her mother was going to have her drowned. Anyone else I could leave her with would probably also try to drown her, if they didn’t expose her the way her nursemaid did. What was I going to do, leave her to be raised by wolves?"

Aziraphale sighed and looked out the window. "Poor girl. It really is a pity she took after you."

Crowley snorted. "Thanks for that."

"Well, the only reason you can't change that aspect of your appearance is that you were punished! She's just a child, she hasn't got any reason to be punished except…"

Crowley grimaced. "Original sin?"

Aziraphale shook his head. "Eve’s descendant. It isn't right.”

He sat up straight with frustration. "Neither is killing her!"

"She's going to grow up, Crowley, and when she does she'll be dangerous."

"I'm going to keep her under control. I don’t want another Flood any more than you do."

"Fine, perhaps you manage to keep her under control. But what sort of life is she going to have? You can't protect her from that forever."

Crowley stood and slammed his hands on the table, nearly knocking his chair over. "The alternative is _killing her_ , Aziraphale! That's what we're discussing, as much as you'd like to deflect from it by talking about what a terrible thing I’ve done letting her exist at all."

"We wouldn't have to be discussing it at all if you'd just told me," Aziraphale snapped. "The Arrangement—"

"Sod the Arrangement!" Crowley shouted. "Do you want to know something? I actually felt badly not telling you before. Go- Sa- _Fuck_ , though, do I feel vindicated now. You probably would have gone right to Heaven asking for clemency, and they'd have given you the same bloody orders."

Aziraphale clenched his teeth.

"Tell me I'm wrong."

He took a deep breath. "So where does that leave us?"

Crowley downed the contents of his goblet and slammed it down on the table. "That'sssss up to you," he said, and then he stormed out of the room.

Aziraphale let out a strangled scream and chased after him. “Crowley. Crowley!” He grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”

“To get sssssssome air,” Crowley hissed, "and to check you haven't sssssscarred my daughter for life."

Aziraphale watched the courtyard from the window, gloomily nursing his drink.

Crowley appeared a minute or so later. He picked Melanie up out of the dirt and sat her on one of the stone benches. They talked too quietly for Aziraphale to hear, but he could see Crowley’s hand playing with the ends of the girl’s long hair throughout their conversation The girl spoke animatedly, her hands gesticulating wildly and her expressions as readable as a mural from the library window. She was cross, at first, then worried as Crowley began to speak to her. Then he asked her something and her face lit up. She jumped off the bench and ran to her little rock trench, pointing at different parts of the structure and explaining them to her father.

Crowley didn't appear to be listening, but he looked more distracted than irritated. He nodded along, even managing a smile or two when Melanie looked at him. At one point he glanced up and seemed to meet Aziraphale's eyes. Crowley's body tensed, and he glared up at him before giving his daughter his full attention.

Sighing, Aziraphale left the window and went down to the courtyard. He poked his head outside and cleared his throat.

They both froze and looked at him. Melanie stood from her trench.

Crowley stepped in front of her. “What?” he asked in English.

Aziraphale looked at the ground. “You really do care for her, don’t you?”

“Don’t kick me while I’m down, angel,” Crowley sneered.

“I’ll help you,” he said, meeting Crowley's eyes. “Both of you. Come back inside and help me figure out how.”

Crowley let out a shaky breath and nodded. “Are you alright out here?” he asked Melanie.

She pouted. “I’m bored.”

“Can you hold out a little longer?" he asked, his tone measured and patient. "Aziraphale and I just need to figure out… We just need to talk.”

Melanie crossed her arms. “I bet I could help if you just told me what you were talking about. I know it's about me”

“It’s _really_ not a conversation I want you to hear until you know it turns out alright,” Crowley sighed.

“I can be brave!” she argued.

“Look, it’s not just that it’s scary. There’s a lot of it that you won’t understand and it’s too urgent for us to take the time to explain it to you until we’ve come up with a solution.”

“You had time to fight with 'Zir-fel,” she shot back.

Aziraphale watched them continue to argue with anthropological—and demonological—fascination. He’d seen parents arguing with their children, but as of the fourteenth century A.D. he hadn’t seen too many fathers actually try to reason with their children. It was sweet, certainly—novel, even—but he wasn’t the child’s father and didn’t have nearly Crowley’s patience.

He waited for a pause and cut in, “Little girl, if I let you eat whatever sweets you like, will you let us talk in private?”

Melanie looked ready to argue when he addressed her as ‘little girl,’ but she stopped when she heard his offer. “As many as I like?”

“Now hang on—“ Crowley started.

Aziraphale put up a hand to him. “Angels can heal," he continued on, still addressing Melanie. "I’ll make sure you don’t even feel sick after.”

Crowley groaned. "She's never going to sleep tonight."

Melanie squinted suspiciously at Crowley. “Papa, you’ve healed me when I was sick before,” she said slowly.

He glared at Aziraphale. “You know what, angel? I’ve changed my mind. The Arrangement is definitely off.”

Aziraphale smiled at him. He was irritated, but the warmth between them was back.

 

* * *

 

Melanie helped herself to an impressive array of cakes and pastries that had miraculously appeared at the dining room table while Crowley and Aziraphale spoke in English about good alternatives to smiting a five-year-old child. She watched them, trying to pick up what she could from their facial expressions, but they’d cooled toward each other so there wasn’t much to glean except that it wasn’t going terribly well.

“Couldn’t you just lie?” asked Crowley. “You’ve lied to Heaven plenty of times.”

“They want this done quickly,” said Aziraphale. “That means they expect me to be in France within the next week to look for her.”

Crowley took off his spectacles and covered his face in his hands, his shoulders slumping. “Maybe we just run.”

“That would be unlivable for all three of us. We’re both based in Europe, we can’t avoid each other forever. And I don’t think Heaven would take too kindly to me losing you if I’ve already got Nice as a lead.” He massaged his temples. “What was your plan if I didn’t agree to help you?”

“To be completely honest, was just going to kill you,” said Crowley glumly. His hand reached down and returned with a cruel-looking dagger. He placed it on the table.

Aziraphale took in a scandalized gasp. “Really!”

“Well she’s only got the one body! You’d at least come back.”

Aziraphale went to argue, but then thought about what Crowley had said. “That’s not a bad idea, actually.”

Crowley sat up. "Sorry, what?”

“I can’t very well keep track of you if I’m not on Earth. And getting another body takes, what, ten years? Give or take? She’ll be nearly grown by then. If you can keep her hidden, I can say I've lost her and they might forget about her or assume the problem's taken care of itself.”

Crowley picked up the dagger and began twisting it absently in his hand. “I’ll have to be careful when she starts coming into herself. You’re not wrong, there was a reason the Nephilim were wiped out.”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, “but they all lived with humans. You can actually give her some guidance.” He paused. “Although it is _you._ ”

Crowley shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t want her in Hell. I do your good deeds all the time, I can teach her to… I don't know, be nice and not murder people.”

“Good,” said Aziraphale. He chuckled proudly. “Good! Oh, I do think this could work.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow at him. “Aziraphale, not to try and dissuade you, but this _does_ mean you have to die.”

“Ah." He deflated. “Yes. I haven't got too many affairs to get in order. This has been my priority for the last few days, so I haven't really got any projects that need closing out. I’ll have to do something about my things.”

“I can take your things,” Crowley offered. “I was thinking of taking Melanie to Italy since we can't go back to France. Warm, you know.”

“Where in Italy?”

“Venice. It’s central, easy to disappear in. A good place to lie low until Melanie’s older.”

Aziraphale nodded. “It could be good for her to have books around. If you supervise her, that is,” he added sharply. “I won’t come back to find them ruined.”

“They’ll be fine,” said Crowley with the air of someone who fully intended to miracle away any damage he or his daughter did before Aziraphale could ever know it had happened. “So that’s the plan? You let me kill you, I watch your stuff and make sure my kid isn’t a danger to humanity?”

Aziraphale reached across the table and offered his hand. “Agreed.”

Crowley grasped Aziraphale's hand in his and shook it once.

Melanie perked up in her chair. “Does that mean you’re done?”

“Yes,” said Crowley, letting go of Aziraphale’s hand and slumping back, his eyes shut. “We’re done.”

Deeming her father useless, Melanie looked at Aziraphale. “So?”

“Oh. Er, I’m not sure I’m the best person to be telling you— That is to say, there’s context that’s—“

Crowley opened his eyes and gave Melanie a lazy glance. He cut in, “You know how I don’t tell Hell about you so you don’t have to work for them?”

She nodded.

“Well Heaven found out about you and assumed I had already told Hell about you, and they weren’t happy. The angel and I talked things over, and now it's sorted.”

"How?" she asked excitedly.

Crowley glanced out the window at the blue dusk. "You know what? It's getting to be your bedtime. Why don't I explain everything in the morning?"

Melanie threw her head back and groaned. “You said you’d tell me!”

“And I promise I will, no details spared, but the sun sets when it sets.”

It took a while, but Crowley convinced Melanie to agree to try and sleep. Aziraphale led them to a room he felt was suitable for her, and he stayed just within earshot as Crowley got her ready for bed. Melanie tried to ask questions, and every time Crowley promised he’d tell her in the morning. It seemed that she trusted his promise, but she refused to relent until she was certain her father’s resolve was ironclad. After a short argument, she was convinced.

They exchanged goodnights. Aziraphale could have sworn he heard the light pop of a kiss on a forehead or cheek. His heart—not long for this world, he thought with no small amount irritation—did a flip in his chest.

Crowley turned the corner and jumped when he saw Aziraphale. “Were you eavesdropping?”

He smiled. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, my dear. It was sweet.”

“I am not _sweet_ ,” Crowley spat. ”Now, come on, let’s get good and pissed before I murder you.”

They drank late into the night, catching up with one another. It had been a good few decades since they’d seen each other in person, but that was the joy of having a friend as old as Crowley. You could always pick up right where you left off, even if you had nearly come to blows because you threatened his child.

Aziraphale couldn’t get much out of him about what he’d been up to before Melanie came along. He muttered something about the war with England and how the bloody plague was making his job nigh on impossible, and then he quickly changed the subject to what Aziraphale had been up to. They got on a tangent about a spice merchant they’d both known in Macedonia back in the day and before they knew it the sun was about to rise.

Aziraphale looked out the window and sighed. “M’afraid it’s time, d…” He shook his head to clear it. “Ah, dear boy.”

Crowley looked out at the brightening sky. “Mm,” he said, pulling out the dagger. “Should ssssssober up, then, eh?”

“F’you wouldn’t mind. I’d like a quick death. Not that I really want to die, to be completely honest.”

“I don’t want you to,” Crowley agreed. “Sssss’just gonna be me and the kid. No you, no Claudette, no anyone.”

“Claudette s’posed— er, exposed her.”

“She was a bloody good nursssssssemaid, though. I dunno what I’m doing. Plussss we could have had fun,” he added, picking at the dagger's leather wrapping.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. “What, raising a child together?”

“Yeah. You’d like Melanie.”

“I do like her, my dear. That’s why I’m about to let you stab me.”

“Right, but I mean if you got to know her you’d _really_ like her.”

Aziraphale nodded. "M'sorry I threatened her. I was angry with you and I had my orders. I didn't realize how much you love her."

Crowley looked at him oddly, opened his mouth to speak, and then seemed to think better of it. He shut his eyes and shuddered as the alcohol left his body. “Right,” he said, putting his spectacles back on. “Do you care particularly about this chair or this carpet?”

Aziraphale shook his head no.

“Excellent.” He stood up, walked over to Aziraphale, and pulled the chair out so he had a clear shot. “Give Gabriel hell for me, won’t you?”

He laughed. “Certainly, my dear.”

“And, Aziraphale?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you,” he said, and the dagger plunged into his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha, that fun thing where you post Chapter 1 feeling good about Chapter 2, but then you read Chapter 2 again and it gets twice as long and edited a bunch of times. Enjoy!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About eleven and a half years have passed...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for waiting on this chapter. The first two didn't exactly come easy, but this one took me forever because I kept changing my mind about what exactly I wanted to do with it since it has an actual damn plot. Plus Christmas happened. 
> 
> Also I know very little about Venice in 1404 or, like, all that much about Italy at all compared to other stuff I know better. Welp!
> 
> Please enjoy!!

**_Venice, 1404_ **

A small, dark figure sat in the piazza with a book in their lap and the wide brim of their hat obscuring their face. The figure was clad head to toe in black: the hat, black tunic, black hose, black boots. The outfit was adorned in gold; this wasn’t a person in mourning, this was someone who celebrated death, misery, and darkness. They carried a plain brown satchel, but the effect was still intimidating enough that people steered clear.

If one were to have approached the figure, they might have been surprised to discover that the figure was a young woman of sixteen, her long black hair plaited neatly and hanging down her back. They might also have glanced at her book and, if they were knowledgeable about that sort of thing, noticed the strange occult symbols she was studying so carefully.

Someone did approach her. She walked across the piazza sat down wordlessly beside her, twisting a handkerchief until her knuckles made half-moon impressions in her pink, plump hands.

The figure flipped a page in her book. “So?” she asked.

The woman swallowed. “I’m ready to make a deal.”

Under the brim of her hat, Melani de Crolli smiled a devilish smile. 

—

Aziraphale entered what must have been the tenth blessed piazza he’d encountered that day. He was flattered by the numerous church-based public spaces the city had to offer, but his head was still swimming with the drone of constant hosannas and his ethereal form had signed so much paperwork he was feeling phantom cramps in his earthly hand. He just wanted to find Crowley and make sure he hadn’t completely wasted his time.

He’d spent so long looking for people with eye coverings that he almost didn’t notice the black-clad figure tucking a book into a satchel before leading a nervous-looking noblewoman across the piazza and down a narrow street. The figure was wearing hose instead of a dress, but it wasn’t Crowley and it was the best candidate for the child that he’d seen all day. He waited until the pair disappeared from his view before following them.

He reached out with his mind and managed to grab hold of the woman’s aura. She led him down an incomprehensible series of twists and turns until, seemingly at random, she stopped. Aziraphale found himself in view of a small circle of cobblestone between two abandoned houses and a scum-covered fountain that had ceased working long ago. He hid himself as the figure in the wide-brimmed hat sat on the fountain.

“I’m glad you’ve seen reason,” she said. She spoke Italian without any discernable French accent. Didn’t humans take a long time to learn languages perfectly, or was it easier for children?

“Either keep this short or go back to Hell," the woman spat.

The figure in black smiled and held her head up, revealing golden-yellow eyes with pupils like a snake's. “Don’t be like that Donna Grimaldi,” Melanie purred. “I’m giving you a much better deal than you were going to get from my colleague.”

Aziraphale furrowed his brow. Colleague? Surely she didn't mean what he thought she meant.

The woman pursed her lips, holding back tears. “Just show it to me.”

His worst suspicions were confirmed when she reached into her satchel and unfurled a crisp roll of parchment, the letters glowing like branding irons. It had what appeared to be an intricate sigil at the bottom, right next to a blank space for a signature. ”Now—“

“Stop,” Aziraphale shouted. He unfurled his wings and stepped into the square, his halo glowing at full brightness.

Melanie shielded her eyes from the light and shrunk back. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell?”

He charged forward and snatched the parchment out of her hand. Then he turned to the noblewoman and pointed down the street. “Go,” he said, eyes ablaze with his unleashed Grace. “Think on your sins.”

The woman nodded, wide-eyed. She hitched up her skirts and then _ran._

“Wait!” Melanie called, standing up. She kicked at a rock on the ground and glared at Aziraphale. “Seriously?”

Aziraphale shoved the parchment into her face. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I-“

“I have spent the nearly _twelve years_ away from my duties on Earth to keep you safe—”

“And you know, thank you, welcome back. Listen-“

“Did your father put you up to this?”

“Would you just read the goddamn contract?!” she shouted.

He did. According to the contract, Donna Grimaldi was to receive a healthy heir to her son’s house in exchange for… “‘A hundred years in Hell, and an eternity in Purgatory, _provided the seller keeps her soul pure until the time of collection_ ’?” he read aloud.

Melanie threw out her arms in a great, angry shrug.

“But you can’t promise that,” he sputtered. “Damnation is eternal. And the clause about keeping one’s soul pure is completely counter to the very purpose of soul-buying.” He read the contract again. The sigil at the bottom was scribbled nonsense. Aziraphale lowered his wings and dimmed his halo.

“No shit,” she said, crossing her arms. “See, it’s this little thing I like to call a _trick_.”

“…I beg your pardon?” He winched his wings entirely.

“My father was going to buy her soul, so I stepped in and pretended to have a better offer so she wouldn’t end up in Hell forever. I’m basically doing your job, right?”

Aziraphale stared at the girl, all dressed in rich mourning black adorned with gold that set off her unnatural eyes. She was playing the part of the demon perfectly—and playing seemed to be the operative word. She met Aziraphale’s eyes without a hint of guilt behind them.

Perhaps her methodology was suspect, but he supposed that was what happened when you left Crowley to oversee a child’s moral upbringing. He relaxed his shoulders, but his expression remained stern. “And he’s… alright with you doing that?”

“He’s alright with you doing it, isn’t he?”

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “It’s a rather demonic way of going about my job, don’t you think?”

Melanie shrugged. “Like my papa always says, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right?"

Aziraphale blinked. "Does he _really_ always say that?"

"Yeah, his jokes are the worst. Look, are we good?”

“I suppose…”

Melanie looked toward an alley. “Luciano!” she called. “It’s alright, you can come out.”

A boy not much older than Melanie took a hesitant step out from the darkness. He was tall—about Aziraphale’s height, actually, which was no small feat—and his body had heft that would have been intimidating if he weren’t pale and shaking with fear as he stared at Aziraphale.

“Aziraphale, this is my friend Luciano. Luciano, this is Aziraphale,” said Melanie casually. Then she added, “He’s an angel.”

Luciano dropped to his knees and crossed himself.

“Oh goodness,” said Aziraphale, feeling awkward. “That really isn’t necessary.” He walked over to Luciano and offered a hand. “Please, my boy, do get up.”

Melanie laughed as the boy took Aziraphale’s hand and let the angel help him to his feet. “How have we been friends this long and you're still this Catholic?”

“If there are just going to be angels around, one of us has to be,” said Luciano, his voice strangled by his adrenaline.

“I am terribly sorry for frightening you,” said Aziraphale. “If I’d known there was another human around, I would have been much more careful.” He paused and looked at Melanie. “Does Crowley know your little friend here knows about all this?”

Melanie looked at the ground sheepishly. “Uh…”

“Melanie!” Aziraphale scolded. “Right. I’m coming home with you, and we’re bringing your… Luciano with us.”

“You’re bringing Il Santo here to meet an actual demon?” asked Melanie in a dry tone that was infuriatingly similar to the demon in question. ”His mind might finally snap.”

He put his hands on his hips and stood over her. “And unless something essential has changed in the last decade, your father will take this news much better if he can be certain the boy won’t expose you both. You do understand _why_ I’ve been gone, don’t you?”

She sighed. “Yes, I know. Luciano, you’ll be fine, won’t you? It’s just my dad.”

Luciano crossed himself again. “Fine,” he said, “but only because we’ve got the angel with us.”

—

Crowley was slumped over the desk in his study, trying to answer a letter from a long-winded partisan. He'd only just started letting himself sleep again, and it was taking every ounce of willpower not to do it full time to make up for the lost years of his daughter's early adolescence.

He got up for the sake of getting up and opened the window, hoping the damp February air would shock him into focus. One of Melanie’s cats caught the activity and came sniffing for food. It caught sight of Crowley and hissed, and Crowley hissed back. The cat scurried away.

They weren’t really her cats—animals hated Crowley enough that even Melanie agreed keeping pets in the house would have been impractical—but she left food for them and they meowed at her window for her to let them inside. It led to a lot of depressing encounters between the creatures and him, but Crowley had learned that the key to a happy life with Melanie was compromise.

He glanced at the letter he was writing in an active attempt to outsmart her and felt a pang of guilt. Groaning, he put the letter in his desk drawer and locked it. He could always get around to it later, and he’d have plenty of tempting to do at Carnevale in two days.

The front door opened downstairs. “Papa!” Melanie called. “Could you come downstairs?”

He got halfway down the stairs before he froze at the sight of who was with Melanie.

“Aziraphale,” he said quietly. He cleared his throat and leaned casually against the railing of the stair. “Took you long enough, eh?”

The angel smiled a broad, genuine smile. “It’s so good to see you, my dear.”

Out of the corner of his eye, while his attention was mostly on Aziraphale, he noticed Melanie lock eyes significantly with someone else they’d brought along. He recognized the boy as one of her little street urchin friends, and he realized with a start that they’d just _locked eyes._

“Melanie,” he said slowly, his parental instincts overwhelming his excitement, “who’s this?”

He thought he saw her mouth the word ‘shit’ to herself. “Papa, this is Luciano. You know, my friend.”

He did know. He’s been hearing about Luciano since Melanie was nine and Crowley had admitted to her that he knew she snuck out of the house to join in with the poorer neighborhood children who played in the streets. So long as she was home for supper, he didn’t particularly mind. It was probably good for her to have human friends. Still, this human friend was in Crowley’s house and Melanie’s eyes were fully uncovered. He looked more closely at the boy and saw that he was quite pale and fidgety, his eyes pointedly avoiding Crowley.

Crowley sighed and descended the rest of the way down the stairs. “Melanie, you didn’t tell him _everything_ , did you?” he asked her in French.

“He was her lookout while she was poaching one of your clients,” said Aziraphale, also in French.

“If you’re going to talk about my friend like he’s some kind of criminal, you could at least do it in a language he understands,” Melanie snapped in Italian.

Luciano shifted on his feet. “Melanie, it’s fine,” he whispered desperately.

Crowley shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his dark spectacles up to his forehead. “Nothing’s ever straightforward with you, is it, kid?” He fixed his spectacles and looked at Luciano. “You know what I am? What Melanie is?”

“A-a, you’re-you're a… I-I don’t know what you prefer to call yourself, signor,” Luciano hedged.

He raised an impatient eyebrow. “It would be useful to know what you think.”

“A demon, signor," said the boy in a hushed tone.

“How long have you known?”

“A few years now, I think.”

Crowley turned to Melanie. “So for ‘a few years now’ both of us have been compromised and you didn’t think to maybe tell me in case something went wrong?”

Melanie threw up her hands. “I told him after the whole thing with the musician, alright? I was mad at you, and then it got to be too late to tell you and you’re so paranoid you would have made us leave Venice forever if you'd known.”

“ _Paranoid?_ " he repeated, his voice rising with anger. "Aziraphale, did I hallucinate what you told me Heaven ordered you to do last time someone outside of the family knew about Melanie?”

“No,” said Aziraphale coolly. “I believe I am also within my rights to point out that I _died_ to keep from carrying out those orders.”

Melanie laughed darkly, keeping her attention on Crowley. “Oh, good. Fantastic. Now you’ve got your angel friend here to help you guilt me.”

“You’re deflecting,” said Crowley, pointing at her and stepping forward. “This isn’t just your secret to keep, Melanie. I don’t know your friend, I don’t know if I can trust him not to expose you to Heaven or send a priest after me or any number of things a human could do.”

“He’s my best friend! He’d never do any of that, would you, Luca?”

Luciano, who was looking close to fainting, shook his head no.

Crowley looked at the boy and felt his resolve waver. “Aziraphale, are Heaven onto us?”

“No,” Aziraphale admitted. “I was told to keep an eye out but resume my normal duties.”

He let out a breath. “Look—Luciano, was it?”

The boy stiffened. “Yes, signor.”

“You haven’t given us away yet, and I’m grateful for that. I’m not going to… I don’t know. Eat you, or whatever it is you think I’m going to do.” He turned to Melanie. “I don’t know what you’ve been telling him about me.”

“Hey, I had nothing to do with this,” she said, holding her hands defensively at chest level. “He’s just superstitious.”

Luciano wasn’t together enough to mount an eloquent defense, but he did manage to grunt and gesture emphatically at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale cast a desperate glance at Crowley.

“Alright, alright,” said Crowley. “Go home, Luciano. And, as long as everything’s out in the open, quit sneaking into my house. I don't mind you coming 'round the front and you're really not all that stealthy.”

Melanie snorted. “Told you.”

Luciano leaned in and whispered too softly for a human to hear, not that it stopped Crowley. “Will you be alright?”

She rolled her eyes and patted him on the upper arm, his shoulder being a bit of a stretch for her. “I’ll be fine. Just go home, I’ll talk to you later.”

Luciano cast one last nervous glance at Crowley and practically ran out the door.

Melanie watched him go and then turned to her father, looking resigned. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. “He’s the only one who knows. I couldn’t not tell him, he’s practically family.”

“I understand,” said Crowley, crossing his arms, “but have you honestly got him helping you with deals? I’m barely okay with you being involved in all this, and you’re at least half a demon. He’s just a human kid.”

“He's like eighteen and it was his idea! Free will, right?”

“Is that what you’ll say if something goes wrong?” he asked seriously.

Melanie raised an eyebrow. “He'd be just as upset if something happened to me. That's how friendship works.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “I’d quite like to have a bit of context, if everything's resolved.”

“Ah,” said Crowley. “Right. Mel, why don’t you go change out of that ridiculous outfit? You look like a second son who just killed his father and brother and now he’s wearing all their riches to the funeral.”

She grinned. “That’s kind of what I was going for.” She walked up to Crowley, got on her tip toes, and kissed his cheek. “Have fun with your angel.”

He glowered at her, and she skipped away. Crowley looked at Aziraphale and shook his head. “Teenagers. Come on, I’ve got a great view of the canal and you stink of Heaven. We need to get you tainted with a bit of gluttony.”

—

“An Arrangement?” Aziraphale repeated. “With a child?”

“Well, not an _Arrangement._ It’s smaller and better supervised than that.”

They were sat on a balcony overlooking the canal the Crowleys lived on. It had three elaborately carved wooden chairs surrounding a small table set with bread, fruit, cheese, three goblets, and a bottle of wine.

“But you’re letting her thwart you," said Aziraphale. He sipped his wine hesitant, let the taste settle on his tongue, swallowed, and took a much more enthusiastic sip.

“It was that or she’d never talk to me again," said Crowley, taking a pear from the table and twisting the stem. "Fun parenting fact for you, angel, when you raise your child to be a good person sometimes they grow up without much of a stomach for evil. Especially if they don’t see you doing evil until they’re almost thirteen years old.”

“‘The thing with the musician,’ wasn’t that what Melanie said?”

“Yes, she caught me trying to buy a lute player's soul in exchange for talent with the lute. It was right after my centennial performance review for the fourteenth century. It hadn’t gone well, you see.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, looking slightly queasy. Crowley had never told him outright the things Hell did to him to keep him in line, but the way Crowley looked over his shoulder while throwing himself obsessively into his work after the fact was an eloquent hint.

“Melanie wasn’t going to let me work, and if I didn’t work they were going to send someone after me and we’d both be done for." He ate a bit of pear before continuing. "Our Arrangement had been working so well these past few centuries I thought, well, why not make it child friendly since she seems so keen on stopping me anyway? She gets to appease her conscience, I keep her from getting into anything too dangerous and clean up her messes. It works.”

“Twelve seems awfully young to have started her on all this.”

“I was just teaching her then, mostly. I stuck to long term plans instead of quick soul deals until she got a good grasp of it.”

Aziraphale sipped his wine dubiously. “Sixteen is _also_ quite young.”

“It’s a good outlet for her abilities, and I’m pretty sure the alternative would be to lose her completely.”

“I’m glad to see she hasn’t grown up to be like you, at least," Aziraphale relented.

Crowley grimaced. He knew Aziraphale meant ‘not evil,’ but he'd never been worried about that. The thing that had worried him the most during those early fights wasn’t even that she wouldn’t be able to accept what Crowley was—though that was certainly part of it. What had worried him was how much Melanie reminded him of himself _before_ he was evil. No demon remembered what their name had been in Heaven, and even a supernatural memory faded after six thousand years, but Crowley remembered who he’d been. Fiercely loyal to his friends, stubborn, and driven by the ironclad conviction that if he only pointed out that a system was wrong, the ones perpetuating that system would change it to make it better.

He often wondered if he’d done Melanie a disservice by teaching her to counter the bad things he did instead of letting her learn how the world worked, but those had been awful lessons to learn when it was already too late for him. And, ever the optimist, he rather hoped those traits would work better for a human than they had for an angel.

He wasn’t about to explain all that to Aziraphale, however, so he just said, “Yeah. It’s great,” without much commitment. “Thanks again for letting me kill you.”

Aziraphale took a longer, more emphatic sip of his wine. “I’m glad to see it wasn’t for nothing. I got an earful from Gabriel about letting myself be bested.”

Crowley put on a smirk. “Did they notice you were piss drunk when I killed you?”

“I almost got away with it, but then Gabriel checked,” said Aziraphale miserably. “That was why it took so long, I was being disciplined.” He paused and looked at Crowley. “Although one should of course count one’s blessings. I’m sure being lectured and taking a corporation recertification training module wasn’t nearly as bad as whatever you went through.”

“No,” he agreed, reaching for his goblet and drinking.

Aziraphale reached over and pat Crowley’s arm. “I really am proud to see you working so hard to protect your child from the same fate. Perhaps she isn’t so different from you, because deep down you’re honestly—“

“Bless it, angel, don’t make me kill you again," he snapped.

“If you insist,” he said smugly. “At any rate, she’s lucky to have you for a father.”

Crowley grabbed a slice of bread and bit into it to hide his smile.

"I always forget how long a decade is for humans," Aziraphale continued. "She's a completely different person. She feels like a real person, for one thing."

"It goes by quick on the ground, too. It seems like we moved to Venice only a week ago, and now she's stealing my clothes and manipulating nobility into foiling my evil plans for her." His pride warmed him and he gave up on hiding it. "Humans really are incredible."

"I'd argue it's an angelic thing that she's doing," said Aziraphale, slicing off a bit of cheese for himself.

Crowley scoffed. "Like Hell it's angelic. She's my bloody kid."

"I'm not arguing that _she's_ angelic, merely that her actions are."

"What, just because they're good?"

"All good things come from Heaven, my dear," said Aziraphale primly.

"Yeah? Like those orders you found _so immoral_ you let me kill you so you wouldn't have to carry them out?"

"Well— That doesn't mean they weren't _good!_ It's not as though there's only one way of being good. Your daughter poses as a demon to do good, which isn't the way I'd ever go about it, but she's still doing good by countering Hell's influence on the world. She is quite literally doing God's work."

“But she’s not doing it for God, she’s doing it for the very practical purpose of keeping people from going to Hell because the idea upsets her.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale with an air of ethereal wisdom, “but that’s where ineffability comes into play. You see, godliness exists in all things that come from Earth. Melanie has a spark of the divine in her that drives her just as much as the blot of original sin.”

“What about when she does good things out of spite, then, eh? Would you call that godliness?”

“Wow, Papa, I leave you alone for half an hour and you’re already playing out a Socrates dialectic.” Melanie walked up to the table and, being a French teenager who’d grown up in Italy, poured herself a goblet of wine. She’d traded her garish gold and men’s mourning garb for a simple green frock made of wool. “Have you figured out the meaning of life yet?”

“We were discussing the origin of goodness,” Aziraphale explained.

Melanie nodded, and then she shrugged. “It’s what you make of it, right? Papa’s a demon, but he’s not a bad person.”

Crowley and Aziraphale began to argue in unison.

“Now hang on a minute—“

“Well, actually, my dear—“

She laughed. “Oh, you two are too cute. I’m just saying that if you guys don’t know what morality is, nobody does.” She tilted her head back and took a generous sip of wine. “What did you call it a minute ago, Aziraphale? ‘Ineffability’?”

Aziraphale sputtered for a moment, scandalized, and then he pressed on. “But you inherently knew that stopping your father was the right thing to do! That’s the bit of divinity that lives in all human souls!”

“Maybe it is inherent—and I’m not saying I’m sure that it is—but if all good comes from divinity how come Papa isn’t trying to raise me to be evil?”

Crowley and Aziraphale looked at each other uncomfortably.

Melanie smiled triumphantly and popped a grape into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. “Anyway, sorry for the confusion earlier, Aziraphale.” She paused. “Is there something else I should be calling you? Signor? Uncle?”

“‘Uncle Aziraphale,’” Crowley repeated with a smirk.

Aziraphale glared at him. “Just ‘Aziraphale’ is fine, thank you,” he said. Then he looked Melanie over. “My, you’ve grown. I suppose I should be asking whether you prefer ‘signorina.’”

“Nah,” said Melanie. “You let my papa stab you over me and I learned everything I know from your books; that probably makes you family.”

He smiled at her. “Then Melanie you’ll remain.”

Melanie smiled back, and then she sat up straight. "Actually, hang on. Can I show you something? I've been dying to show it to someone who'd get it, and I can't show it to Papa because—well, you'll see." She stood and grinned at him without the slightest hint of irony. "Come on," she said. "You can finish figuring out where I fit in the Ineffable Plan later."

—

Melanie led Aziraphale to a door at the end of the left third floor corridor, also overlooking the canal.

“I think you’re going to like this,” she said, shifting from one foot to the other with excitement. For the first time all day, Aziraphale recognized the little girl he’d met in England.

Even with the clouds overhead, Melanie’s room was bright thanks to the sky's dim light reflecting off the water and into the large windows on the far wall. The windows were adorned with rich blue curtains, and the plaster walls were covered in parchment and charcoal writings. Aziraphale approached one and looked closely. “Is this sacred geometry?” he asked, eyes wide.

“Sure is,” she said with a proud smile. She pointed to a small bookshelf in the corner. “Most of those are yours, but I've started collecting a few of my own.”

Aziraphale approached the bookshelf and crouched down to take a better look. There were books in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic—even a few scrolls in Sanskrit and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Next to the latter was a collection of parchment. He pulled them out and recognized Crowley’s handwriting. They were direct translations of text into French, historical notes, and, on occasion, personal anecdotes about the authors or subjects of the scrolls. “So what is it you couldn’t show your father? Not this, clearly.”

“No, no, those are things he wrote up for me when he realized I wasn’t any good at anything older than Biblical Hebrew. Plus if you’re going to let your immortal dad tutor you, why not take advantage, right?”

“He tutored you?”

“Yeah. Kind of. Mostly he taught me what I needed to know to learn and then I just read what I wanted and asked questions.”

Aziraphale scratched behind his ear. “And you wanted to learn…”

“The occult, yeah.” She beamed and shut the door, revealing a powerful circular ward carved into the door. There was a blur of white chalk in the upper left quadrant.

Aziraphale approached the blur and recognized the squiggly shape—erased beyond magical usefulness—as Crowley’s formal sigil, surrounded by several less carefully erased symbols from various traditions. “What’s this?”

“It’s a working lock,” she said proudly. “Papa’s the only demon I want in here, most of the time, and even then I keep all my thwarting stuff in here and it’s more fun when I can surprise him. I carved out most of the seal in wood and put the exception in chalk, so that way he's not locked out all the time.”

“That’s actually quite clever,” said Aziraphale. “I’ll admit I don’t share your passion for these things, but I need to know about them for my work and I’ve never thought to set something like this up for Crowley. Have you got notes for it?”

“Somewhere in here,” she replied, running to a chest in the corner of the room.

A thought struck Aziraphale as he watched her.  He looked back at the seal and his suspicions were confirmed. “There’s no exception for you written here.”

“Well, no,” she said distractedly, setting a loud stack of parchment pieces aside. “I’m not a demon.”

“Didn’t you worry about it when you put a seal in your bedchamber?”

“Nah.“ She grunted as she pulled a clamshell box out of the chest. “I mean Papa made me test it with smaller stuff, first—minor consecration seals, that kind of thing—but I knew I’d be fine and I totally was.”

He smiled. “That’s wonderful news. I thought that might be the case for you, but I wasn’t certain.”

“Yeah.” She grunted as she bent further over the chest. "I’ve actually been wondering if there’s a way to reverse engineer this stuff for angels. The closest thing I’ve ever heard is lamb’s blood on the door, and that sounded more symbolic than anything.”

“As far as I know, it was,” said Aziraphale, looking away from her. He hadn’t taken part directly in the plagues, but he and Crowley had been in Egypt together. It was the worst fight they’d ever had. _Well, second worst now_ , he thought, glancing back up at Melanie. “Why would you want to do that, though?”

She pulled her head out of the chest and met his eyes. “No offense, Aziraphale, but last time I saw you my dad had to yell at you until you agreed not to kill me. I have a feeling that wouldn’t work so well with another angel.”

He sighed. “I suppose that’s fair. Is all this what you wanted to show me?”

“Kind of.” She bent down again, fished out a roll of parchment, and stretched her hand out to Aziraphale. “Found it.”

Aziraphale walked over and took it.

Melanie continued digging. “Damn it, where is it? Ah!” She pulled out a particularly large scroll and unfurled it on the bed.

There was a table full of well-organized notes written at the top of it, and then a scattered list of names circled and connected with lines. Some of them were crossed out with one slash, and some with an X.

Melanie ran to the windowsill, grabbed a stick of charcoal, and underlined ‘Claudia de Grimaldi.’ “That’s who you scared off today,” she said. “I was hoping she’d show at Carnevale, but thanks to you she’s probably joining a convent or something and I need to regroup.”

“Why was it important she show at Carnevale?”

Melanie pointed to the names. “Everyone who isn’t crossed out is someone I know is in Papa’s sphere of influence. The rest are people I’ve either brought to my side—one slash—or pushed out of the game entirely—that’s the X’s.”

Aziraphale tilted his head. “This seems awfully elaborate. I normally just ask Crowley what he's doing and plan accordingly.”

Melanie shook her head no. “You two cancel each other out; I’m actually trying to stop him. If he knows what I know, that’s an advantage for him, right?”

“I suppose,” said Aziraphale, who hadn’t engaged in this sort of competition in hundreds of years and was feeling inadequate next to the child’s evident passion for the task. ”Are you asking me for help stopping him?”

“Since you knocked out Plan A for me, I’d love to borrow your six thousand years of experience for Plan B.” She held out a hand. “Deal?”

Aziraphale took it carefully, thinking it would be delicate. To his surprise her grip was firm and surprisingly warm compared to Crowley’s hands. He smiled. “Deal.”

—

Luciano trudged home with his hands in his pockets, feeling like a prize idiot.

He knew one day he’d have to meet Signor de Crolli, and he'd thought he was prepared for that, but he hadn’t been prepared to do it in the presence of an honest to God angel who scolded him like a nosy maiden aunt. And then the angel had gone and gotten Melanie in trouble with the demon he was apparently friends with. Ordinarily he’d climb through Melanie’s window and just ask her about it after the fact, but Signor de Crolli had apparently been humoring him the whole time and he didn’t know what it looked like when a demon punished his daughter. Melanie spoke fondly enough of him, but Luciano had only known him as an invisible adversary they were working to defeat and didn't know if he could really trust the opinion of someone who lived with him.

He wished he could go to confession about this, but he’d promised Melanie he’d keep her out of his prayers after she told him what she was, and there was no power on earth fearsome enough to make him forget the helpless look in her eyes the first time she let him see them. He couldn’t forget the little French girl with the veil over her eyes he’d plucked from a pack of bullies.

No, that wasn’t fair. He’d scared the bullies off for good, but only after she’d bit one and kicked another in the stomach. They were both tough, both bastards with only one parent in their lives, but Melanie had always been taken care of and Luciano had always taken care of his own whether they were his mother or his supernatural best friend.

He just had to figure out how he was supposed to take care of her when it was an angel getting her into trouble. It didn't seem like particularly big trouble, mind, but he had a bad feeling something was about to go horribly wrong.

Luciano was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn't notice an old woman coming his way. His long arm swung into her shoulder, and she fell to the ground.

He gasped and crouched at her side. "Signora, are you alright? Here, let me help you." He held out a hand and pulled her to her feet. "I'm so, so sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going."

"It's nothing, my boy," said the woman. She smiled and kept hold of his hand. There was something off about her smile, but Luciano couldn't put a finger on it. "You seem like such a sweet thing. Will you let me read your palm?"

"Oh," said Luciano, taken aback. "If you like."

The woman flipped his palm face up and clucked her tongue. "Just as I thought. There's trouble in your future, boy."

"Trouble?" he asked. "What sort of trouble?"

She looked up at him and grinned with too many teeth in her mouth and the flames of Hell in her eyes. "My sort of trouble," she said in a voice too deep to be human. The woman's form disappeared into a thick black smoke that forced itself into Luciano's mouth, nose, even his eyes. It traveled down his throat, choking him, and he felt his sense of self shift to the back of his head as something else took over. Something began to burn against his chest. He winced.

Without his willing it, his hand traveled to the leather cord around his neck. It pulled the wooden cross pendant his mother had made for him off and threw it to the side. "That's better," he heard himself say.

A series of memories flashed in his mind. The angel, Signor de Crolli's house, and Melanie. He saw a lot of images of Melanie.

The thing inside him smiled with his lips. "Well, well, well," it said. "Looks like old Crawly's got a bit of trouble in his future, too."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“It’s just not the way I ordinarily go about this. Your father is more friend than adversary to me, at this point.”_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Those expressive brows of hers contorted to complement Melanie's obvious skepticism. “And I love my father more than anyone in the world. Doesn’t mean I’m going to let people suffer eternal damnation for him if I can help it.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in the end notes

After dinner, both Crowley and Melanie went up to their respective rooms claiming they had work to do. Aziraphale found the most comfortable chair in the library, lit a candle, and settled in with a collection of Roman poetry. The poems had been copied down in Prussia in the ninth century with a delicate hand and evocative illustrations. In the cozy circle of light his candle carved out in the darkness, it didn’t take long for Aziraphale to settle into the book for the night.

It took even less time for him to be snapped out of it by a knock at the door.

Aziraphale sighed tiredly. He took the scrap of paper he reserved for just such an occasion and tucked it gingerly into the inner spine of the book. Then he set it down, picked up his candle, and answered the door.

Melanie stood in the darkness with a robe thrown over her nightclothes, her dark hair in long, loose waves over her shoulders. Her arms were full of books, paper, and ink and she carried a pair of quills between her teeth. There was a fully-lit candelabra floating in front of her. She met Aziraphale’s eyes sheepishly and shut the door with her foot. Then she put her things down on a table nearby, her face contracting as she scraped her tongue against her teeth to get the bits of feather off.

Aziraphale let out a tired sigh. He’d so been looking forward to a night of peace and solitude. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Not when Papa’s probably sleeping,” she replied. “We only have one other night we can plan before the big party Saturday.”

“And two days,” Aziraphale countered.

Melanie raised one of her dark, arched eyebrows. She had a pointy, heart-shaped face with a long, narrow nose that combined with her eyes and the cheekbones she'd inherited from Crowley reminded him more of a fox than a snake. “Yeah? You want to sneak around him during the day? Papa’s all excited to see you. If we’re both gone he’ll be grumpy and he’ll probably figure out you’re helping me, which will make him grumpier. Plus I don’t want to compromise anything we plan.”

Aziraphale looked into those eyes, looking for the permission to say no he normally found in Crowley’s, but he couldn’t find it. Melanie’s gaze was insistent, even demanding. He sighed again. Of course; Crowley had probably spoiled the girl. “You seem to have a good head on your shoulders,” he said, hoping flattery would help. “I don’t see why your plan needs more than a brief review.”

Her brows furrowed in confusion. “Because people’s souls are on the line? I’m down a pawn after that stunt you pulled today and your help would be a big advantage for me.”

Aziraphale closed his book and got up. With a solemn expression, he went over to the girl and put a hand on her bony little shoulder. “People’s souls are always on the line, my dear. You’ll never meet your human needs if you’re always serving supernatural ones. Let yourself rest tonight and you’ll be stronger for it.”

Melanie blinked several times and pushed his hand off of her. “I’m on a time crunch here. Getting some help from a professional means I can be better-rested on Saturday night when it counts. And you did agree to help me.”

“I suppose I did,” he lamented. “It’s just not the way I ordinarily go about this. Your father is more friend than adversary to me, at this point.”

Those expressive brows of hers contorted to complement Melanie's obvious skepticism. “And I love my father more than anyone in the world. Doesn’t mean I’m going to let people suffer eternal damnation for him if I can help it.”

Aziraphale sighed. “He can’t help what he does, my dear. It’s what he is.”

Her eyelids lowered into a withering stare. “Come on. You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

He didn't, and he knew very well that he didn't, but he wasn't going to _say_ it. Especially not in front of someone whose opinion Crowley valued. “What do you believe?” he deflected.

“He’s scared,” she said with a shrug. “That’s his whole thing, either he does something because it makes him happy or he does it because he's scared of what happens if he doesn't. He’s not evil, he just thinks he has to be evil to keep Hell off his back.”

“I hate to play devil’s advocate,” said Aziraphale, “but he isn’t wrong.”

“That’s exactly it, though!" she said as loudly as she could without fully shouting, pounding her fist into the palm of her hand. "This whole Heaven and Hell thing doesn't have to work the way it does. Someone chose this, whether that was God or the archangels or Satan or whoever. Someone made the rules that say my father has to be evil, or that you have to do what Heaven tells you. It's not actually about good or evil, it's about winning some stupid war." She tilted her chin up, her hands dropping to her side. “And you know that, or I'd be long dead.”

The words landed heavily on Aziraphale’s conscience and he realized he’d probably left an _impression_ on the girl. Maybe she was a little cynical, and that came of growing up with Crowley, but she saw what Aziraphale had done as something worthy of an angel in the truest sense of good, not just good as Heaven defined it. He wasn't certain he agreed with her in principle, but all the same a wave of warmth washed over him with an undercurrent of irritation. She was manipulating him, the little devilspawn, and it was absolutely working.

He stared at her, her face stern yet hopeful, so very eager to do the right thing in spite of her circumstances, and he groaned. “Oh, alright,” he sighed. “The sooner we get to work, the sooner you can go to bed. What is it that you're planning, exactly?"

She unrolled the parchment she'd shown him in her room and pointed to a name: Paolo de Grimaldi. "As I originally planned it out, what Saturday night all came down to is who would own this man's soul at the end of the night."

Aziraphale raised both his eyebrows dubiously. "Again, you don't have the authority to own anyone's soul."

"Oh my Go- I'm not being literal." She shut her eyes, actively trying to calm herself. "Are you actually having trouble getting your head around this," she asked with strained patience, "or are you just being a combative pedant for the fun of it?"

He felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. "Oh. Er, no, I do understand what you mean."

Melanie gave him a withering look. "You're a snarky one, aren't you?"

"I am not snarky!" His hand flew to his chest in scandalized shock.

She laughed. "Oh, boy. You're as bad as Papa when I catch him filling water bowls for the cats. I can see why he's always pining after you."

" _What?!_ "

"Shhh, you'll wake him up!" she hissed—the sharp whispering hiss of a human, not her father's snakelike sibilants. "Could we get back on topic?"

"You were saying about Paolo de Grimaldi's soul," said Aziraphale icily.

"Right!" Melanie said, smiling brightly. "So Paolo de Grimaldi is the new head of the Grimaldi family. His father died a few months back. Paolo and his wife haven't been able to have any children so there's a question of who gets to be Paolo's successor. Now, in my mind this is an opportunity. If Papa had gotten his mother Claudia, he'd have a soul in hand, an heir to influence, and a bunch of ugly people also trying to influence that baby for their own gain."

"And if you'd gotten Claudia?"

Melanie sighed. "Paolo would do just about anything for his mother, including take her place in Hell. Or the fake Hell-to-Purgatory parole thing I made up, anyway, but he wouldn't have known that."

Aziraphale turned this over in his head. "You can't, er, facilitate the creation of legitimate heirs, can you?"

"Ew, no," she squealed, her long nose wrinkling with disgust. "I wouldn't even if I could, that sounds nasty. I was just going to bully him into signing a contract to save his mom and then start picking away at everyone's power until Papa can't use them to spread evil anymore."

"Oh." He blinked. "You're not turning them to good?"

She grimaced. "That's kind of hard to do when your strategy relies on people thinking you're a demon."

He scratched his chin. "That doesn't _have_ to be your strategy."

"Oh, you don't think?" Melanie gestured at her eyes. "Got any other ideas for what to do with this whole situation?"

Her expression was unemotional, impatient even, but all the same Aziraphale felt overwhelmed with sympathy. Crowley at least looked the way he did because he'd done something to warrant it; Melanie just wanted to be good, and it was unlikely she'd ever be _seen_ as good. He'd had a dozen years to accept Crowley's mistake in having a child, but that didn't mean he could forgive him for passing on the burden of his demonic appearance. And Melanie was such a slight little thing. Slender, like her father, but smaller and with the added fragility of her youth.

Melanie frowned at him. "Oh no," she grumbled. "Could you stop looking at me like that, please? It's not like I'm crying myself to sleep at night over it. If I didn't have these eyes, I'd just be some girl and nobody would take me seriously. It's the only advantage I have in this fight on the good side of things; or at least it was before _someone_ decided to get all smitey without bothering to learn any context."

His sympathy dissipated and Aziraphale crossed his arms. "I'm sorry, what was I supposed to think coming back from Heaven and finding you buying a woman's soul?"

She groaned. "I don't know! I guess you're right, but that doesn't change the fact that I have no in with Paolo de Grimaldi anymore."

"You could take the night off," said Aziraphale. "After all, Claudia de Grimaldi would have been Crowley's pawn as well."

"Papa always has contingencies. I just don't know what they are right now."

"You could ask him," Aziraphale proposed, because that was what he had always done in Melanie's position.

The look Melanie gave him could have stripped paint from a wall. She was right, it was hard not to take her seriously with those uncanny eyes boring into him from that sharp little face. He'd gotten used to Crowley's eyes over the millennia, but seeing them on someone else reminded him why Crowley tended to keep them hidden from humans.

"I could ask him," he amended. "It's perfectly normal for us discuss business."

She blinked rapidly, which helped the uncanniness immensely. "Huh. Yeah, that could do it." Then she smiled. "Thank you. I know I already owe you my life, but I owe you double for your help with this."

Aziraphale smiled as well. "Angels don't operate using deals or debts, my dear. Your life is your own, and I think you're doing something wonderful with it. Now get some rest. I'll talk to your father tomorrow."

Melanie gathered her things and left, and as soon as she was gone Aziraphale dropped the saccharine smile, tilted his head back, and sighed. He went back to his chair and sank back into his book.

Then there was another knock at the door.

He stomped over to the door and opened it. "What is it _now?_ " he asked, and then he froze.

Crowley, still fully dressed, froze as well. Then he slumped and let out a small groan. "She got to you first, didn't she?"

Aziraphale looked away guiltily. "Er…"

"Bugger," he muttered under his breath. "Look, I know you're probably reading, but we need to talk about her."

"I assume it's urgent," said Aziraphale, letting go of his final shred of hope for a quiet evening to himself on his first night back on Earth.

Crowley waved a hand and there was a soft 'pop' as a bottle of brandy and two goblets manifested in the air just over the table Melanie had just taken her papers off of, and a light 'thunk' as they landed. The corners of his lips curved up. "I'll make it worth your while with the additional pleasure of my child-free company. It's been ages since we've talked properly."

"We talked last time I saw you," Aziraphale pointed out.

He rolled his eyes. "Even when we weren't fighting last time we saw each other I was getting myself ready to kill you. That's not talking properly. As far as I'm concerned we haven't talked properly since 1329."

Accepting defeat, Aziaphale stood wearily to the side and let Crowley in.

He had to admit, it was nice to be interrupted by Crowley after his interaction with Melanie. She'd grown into a bright and formidable young woman, and he respected that she had a job she needed his help doing, but Crowley knew how to make necessity pleasant for Aziraphale. When Crowley needed something, there was something about the way he hung onto every word Aziraphale said, laughed at his every joke, built on every point he made that made him feel important. An uninformed human might call what Crowley did a form of flirtation or seduction, but Aziaphale knew that he knew better than to try that on an angel. Even if it was sort of flirtation, he probably only did it because that was the only friendly means of persuasion a demon had. Aziraphale knew better than to interpret it as genuine attraction to him. And he was quite good at it, so who was Aziraphale to protest so long as neither of them let it go to their heads?

After indulging Aziraphale with fine brandy and several sharp quips about the latest gossip he'd brought from Heaven, Crowley elaborated on the reason for his visit.

"Look," he said, becoming serious, "here's the long and short of it: since I got Melanie started on the whole thwarting thing I've secured exactly ten souls in four years. That's more than I've done in fifty, but that's not going to be a good enough improvement for Hell."

Aziraphale furrowed his eyebrows. "Is she really that good?"

"She lives in my house, Aziraphale," he said, voice strained with the frustration of four years. "She can follow me around and find where I hide evidence of what I'm doing, and on top of it she's figured out how to make it metaphysically impossible for me to do the same. Which, by the way, is entirely because of those bloody occult books you keep around."

"I need them for work!" he protested. "I didn't build my library with your precocious bastard child in mind." He turned up his nose. "The way I see it, this is once again an example of evil containing the seeds of its own destruction."

Crowley leaned on the table with a weary expression. "Maybe, but the demonseed in question might wind up being collateral damage if someone comes up here and starts snooping around."

Aziraphale opened his mouth to respond, but then he paused and made a face. "That was dreadful."

"Sorry, low-hanging fruit. Point is, angel, I need to invoke the Arrangement. I know this probably puts you in an awful position with my kid, but I think you'll agree that if Hell gets ahold of her the last dozen years will have been a waste of your time."

He crossed his arms. "If I do this, you'll owe me."

"Whatever you want," said Crowley. "I just need her to be safe."

Aziraphale unfurled his arms and relaxed, smiling at Crowley. "Then I'll see to it that she is."

"Sssstop giving me that look."

"I will not," he said primly. "I wouldn't have been willing to let you take me out of commission if I didn't think you cared for her that much. I'm entitled to celebrate that you've continued to do so."

Crowley rolled his eyes and finished his drink. "Whatever. Anyway, I need a new plan. Melanie's knocked out all my other contingencies, and Claudia de Grimaldi was it."

"Oh," said Aziraphale. "That works out quite well, actually. Melanie's Plan B was to have me ask you what your other contingencies were. We'll just need a different plan."

"Oh, good," said Crowley. "That works out. By the way, I think it goes without saying that this whole conversation remains between you and me."

* * *

It did not remain between Aziraphale and Crowley.

Aziraphale held up his end of the bargain, lying and telling her he hadn't had a chance to talk to Crowley yet, but then around ten that morning Melanie found Crowley in his study.

"Morning," she said, leaning lazily against the doorframe and yawning.

"Morning," said Crowley, looking up from his work. He saw the dark circles under Melanie's eyes and frowned. "Late night, kid?"

"Can't let you get the edge just because you don't need sleep," she said haughtily, slumping down into the chair across from him. She was dressed in hose and a tunic—green and blue, this time, not black—which meant she intended to go out later that day.

He sighed. "You've got to pace yourself a bit more. It's a ball during a festival you're stressed over, Melanie, and not even the fun bits of a ball someone age ought to be thinking about."

She rolled her eyes. "What do you know about being someone my age? You burst forth fully formed from God's head walking and talking.”

Crowley put a finger up. “Ah, that’s not exactly how it worked...”

“I’m being rhetorical,” she said dryly. She yawned again and smirked. “Anyway you _would_ want me to slow down, wouldn’t you?”

“Honestly, you’d probably be a more formidable opponent if you were well-rested. I’m your _dad_ , Melanie. You know that comes first.”

She looked down and sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’ll try to get what I need to done today and sleep tonight.”

"Thank you," said Crowley, throwing his head back with relief. He brought his head back down and looked at her. "I know there’s a lot to do since Aziraphale scared Plan A off and you haven’t got a Plan B, but y—”

Melanie’s head snapped up, her eyes blazing. “Excuse me?”

Oops. “Er…”

“Did Aziraphale tell you that?”

Shit, shit, shit. “Melanie, listen-“

She stood up. ”You two are _sabotaging me?_ ”

“No, Mel, darling, not sabotaging.” Crowley stood as well, meeting her eyes imploringly. “It’s just another plan, the same sort of thing you’ve always countered.”

“But you’re working together on it! _He told you what I told him_.”

“He told me, I didn't ask him! But, Mel, of course I'm working with him,” said Crowley. “That’s what I do with Aziraphale, and right now I'm doing it to keep you safe. Eventually he’ll call in the favor and have me do something good on his behalf. It'll balance out.”

She slammed her hand on the table. “It does _not_ balance out! Maybe that’s how Heaven and Hell think about it, but that doesn’t change the reality that there will be people going to Hell who didn’t have to. I’ve told you a thousand times I don’t want you doing that because of me.”

Crowley leaned forward, his teeth clenching. "And I've told _you_ a thousand times that if you weren't here, I'd be doing the same bloody thing because it's not just you I'm trying to keep off the rack."

"That doesn't make it right!" Melanie shouted. "Why do all these people you purchase or poke into damnation deserve eternal torment, but you don't?"

"If it's not me up here, it's someone else," said Crowley. "I was only sent up here in the first place because I'm expendable, and no number of big stunts like I pulled in Eden will ever be enough to change that. And honestly, Melanie, what good would it do if Hell catches you? If you're lucky, they kill you and Heaven takes you. If they don't, you'll be doing my job."

"I would _never_ do your job," Melanie spat. "I don't care what they'd do to me, I couldn't do that to other people."

Crowley laughed bitterly. "You know not all of us decent demons are cowards, right? I fought next to them, I remember who's brave and who isn't, and there isn't a single brave one among us who didn't give in eventually."

"If you're all these brave rebels who went against God, why can't you just go against Satan instead?" she asked, her face crinkling with disdain.

He threw up his arms. "Because it's _Hell_ , Melanie! It's Satan's prison same as the rest of us. This isn't some empire that can be toppled by rebellion, it's a function of the universe created by the same being that made us what we are in the first place. We're not humans, there's no free will in any of this. If it's not Satan making us miserable, it'll be someone else because Hell was created to punish every single being there whether they're the ones strapped to the rack or whether they're the ones twisting it tighter."

Melanie clenched her fists. "That doesn't change the fact that you _went behind my back_ , Papa."

"Well whenever I try to do things above board, we have this stupid fight!"

"It's not stupid," she snapped. "God, you treat me like I'm this dumb kid who doesn't know how the world works because you need your little girl to protect from the big, bad thing that you _literally are_ to justify you doing all the shit you do. And then you bring an angel into it! What happens if someone in Heaven finds out about what he's doing with you? Wouldn't he end up in the same position as you?"

"I didn't force Aziraphale into this; he chose it because it benefits him, too! He's a bloody adult, he can make his own decisions."

"Ha!" Melanie barked with a grin that looked more like baring teeth. "There it is! There it fucking is!"

"You know what? Yeah! Sod it, yes, you're my daughter and it's my job to protect you even when you don't like it!"

She took a deep breath and glared at him. "Fine," she said, and then she walked out the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" Crowley called. "We're not done here."

"I'm staying with Luciano," she called back.

Crowley ran around his desk and over to the door. "Seriously? For how long?"

Melanie paused mid-stomp and turned around. "I don't know, Papa, okay? After the ball, I guess. I just… I can't do what I need to do with you two under  the same roof as me."

He didn't chase her. Instead he stood in the doorway and watched her go up the stairs, watched as a few minutes later she came down and took food from the pantry for Luciano and his mother, and then watched her go out the door.

The moment it shut, Aziraphale walked across the foyer from the library. "What on earth was that all about?"

Crowley sighed. It was going to be a long weekend.

* * *

It was surprising to Luciano how quickly he got used to being possessed. The demon had led him home, having decided that it wanted to have a little fun and it had a couple of nights to plan anyway, and most of the time it gave Luciano the reins. It was uncomfortable listening to someone else reacting in his head, but mostly he could live with it. Mostly. Possession, it turned out, wasn't so much a constant horror as it was an event that constructed horror the way that, four hundred years from then, Haydn would construct his ninety-fourth symphony.

When he got home he tried to ask his mother for help, and the demon wouldn't let his mouth open. His mother thought he was choking.

That night, when his mother began praying over dinner, the demon in Luciano's body folded him in on himself and mashed his hands over his ears to keep out the sound. It had left him to stammer his excuses to her, and they ate their meal in near silence.

It was only when he was alone in bed that the horror became constant. The demon gave him nightmares it forced him to sleep through, it woke him up at odd hours, it used his own hands to claw into his chest and belly and thighs. When the light of dawn broke, Luciano almost wept with relief.

The next day he was exhausted, but he didn't let himself nap and so the demon left him well enough alone. There was work to do on the roof of the house, and none of the things he feared it might do came to pass. It seemed that for now, at least, he wouldn't have to worry about the thing killing him. It needed his body. By mid-morning, he could almost let himself forget what was happening to him. He'd finished his work early and his mother had left a few slices of the bread she'd baked that morning in the kitchen for him. He wiped the sweat of his forehead off of his sleeve and ate ravenously, thinking through what he might do for money that day. With Carnevale so close, there would be ample opportunities for pickpocketing.

Then Melanie showed up at the front door.

She had a large sack full of meats, cheeses, and fresh produce for Luciano and his mother, which meant she wanted to stay over and that she'd be keeping Luciano too busy to make his own money for food. Ordinarily he was happy with the trade-off, but he could feel the demon's thrill at seeing her in person. He tried to warn her off, but it took hold of his tongue and made him tell her that of course she was welcome to stay.

When she took off the brown wide-brimmed hat she was wearing Luciano could see that her eyes were puffy and red. The demon asked her what was wrong.

"It's stupid," she said, to Luciano's relief. "Don't worry about it."

"Alright," Luciano was relieved he was able to say. He held the door open for her, and something inside of him grinned with too many teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! This chapter went through like 3.5 edits where I tried several different scenarios to try and manufacture a little drama, so that's how you know this is an inherently nice, cute little family and they'll all love each other in the end lol
> 
> CW: Self-harm via demonic possession


	5. Chapter 5

It was quickly becoming apparent to Melanie that Luciano was more shaken by his encounters with her father and Aziraphale than she’d thought. When he wasn’t acting strange he was being distant and avoidant, and every time she asked what was wrong he dismissed it as ‘nothing.’ She’d hoped staying with Luciano would clear her head after her fight with her father, but it was only making her feel worse.

Not to mention she had two days to prepare a totally new plan from scratch, she had no way of doing that without knowing what her father and Aziraphale were up to, and Luciano was too distracted by whatever was going on in his head to share her sense of urgency.

“Hey!” She snapped her fingers in his face. “Did you hear what I just said?”

Luciano blinked. “Uhhh…”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. I know yesterday was a lot for you and I want to respect that, but if you're going to help me I need you to actually help me.”

“Right,” said Luciano, still not meeting her eyes. “Sorry.”

Melanie paced the creaky wooden floor. Luciano rented a room in an inn where he and his mother did odd jobs here and there between doing other odd jobs and occasional petty crimes around Venice. Originally the Propizios had shared a room, but Melanie’s fine clothes and her ability to fake her way through high society had expanded Luciano’s clever reach to heavier pockets and a room of his own.

"So like I was saying," she continued, "we can't do anything until we know what they have planned. For all we know they've abandoned Paolo de Grimaldi entirely and have a totally different angle. They might not even be dealing with the Grimaldi family." She paused and looked to make sure Luciano was listening. He looked up and nodded, so she continued, “We need to break into the house. Carefully, this time, none of your knocking things over in the cellar.”

Luciano furrowed his brow. “Can’t you just use the front door? It’s your house.”

“No! I told you, I don’t want them knowing I’m back and that I know what they’re up to. Plus now we have the angel to worry about, and he’s a wildcard.”

“Right,” he said. “Sure. Just… do you need me to do the sneaking with you?”

Melanie studied his face, and he looked back down. She sighed and sat down on the bed next to him. "Luciano, do you not want to do this?"

He stared at her, a war going on behind those big hazel eyes of his. He'd been looking like that all day, like the things he thought and the things he ended up saying were the result of a massive, almost physical struggle. "I—"

She cut him off. "I won't be angry." Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself. "You're family to me, but the fact is that we're just not the same. I'm not— I mean I _am_ human, that's the whole point of me doing this, but I'm also…  I don't want to say _more_ than human, it's not like being half a _demon_ is something to be proud of, but it puts me in a position someone fully human just isn't in. You’re allowed to walk away from this.”

There it was again. His face twisted into surprise, then fear, then disgust. He tilted his head at her. “Are you always this dramatic?” he asked in a cold voice she’d never heard him use before.

Melanie didn’t know what to say, so she went on explaining her plan to break into the house.

That was when she began to suspect that something was really, really wrong with Luciano.

* * *

"I don't know why I thought I was cut out for this," Crowley lamented, pacing in front of the fire in the dining room. "I mean, you said it yourself back in England, didn’t you? I can't protect her from, well…" He gestured emphatically between himself and Aziraphale. "All of it! Me, you, her stupid bloody temper. That's all her mum, by the way, she didn't get it from me."

Aziraphale slumped back in his chair impatiently. "Honestly, my dear, you're being dramatic. You had one fight."

Crowley fixed him with a tired expression. "Oh, one fight, is it? You haven't spent a cumulative twenty-four hours with the girl in her whole life and you've got a perfect read on the whole situation."

"I might have had more time to get to know her," said Aziraphale, crossing his arms, "except you kept her secret from me, let her nursemaid expose her, and put me in a position where I had to choose between _dying_ and _killing a child._ "

"I'm sorry your feelings were hurt and you had to do some boring trainings, but I had a bloody kid to protect. And I still do," he added, voice rising, "and she's run off because _you_ got in the middle of things, so are you going to help me or not?"

"Well, I'm not sure," said Aziraphale coldly. "I haven't spent a cumulative twenty-four hours with the girl in her whole life, and I wouldn't want to get in the middle of things again."

Crowley looked at Aziraphale’s face and softened. This wasn’t right. They argued, sure, but they didn’t fight, not really. "Sorry. I'm sorry, Aziraphale, that wasn't fair. I'm just sick of disappointing her. This parenting thing really is a bugger, you know."

Aziraphale looked up at him from his chair. It was a strange look, sad and tired. “I don’t pretend to, if I’m completely honest. It’s all so human and, well, you’re a _demon_ doing it.”

There was that old canard. Aziraphale had been so smug about Crowley’s affection for his daughter only the night before, but now tensions were high and Aziraphale had probably decided he needed that extra wall up.

It was a canard Crowley had fed, admittedly, kept fat and happy over the years because if it was quacking loudly enough it was easier to pretend he was anything like a proper demon or that he didn’t notice the way Aziraphale always looked at him before parading the stupid thing out again. He should have been fine with it, but he’d spent the last sixteen years marinating in mutual, unconditional love—which he could (privately, secretly) admit that it was, because to deny it after killing Aziraphale for her would have been stupid even for him. It was just that, after all that warmth from Melanie, going back to the games he and Aziraphale played for their own survival was like being pushed into a frozen pond.

“Well you’re an _angel_ ,” Crowley countered, mimicking Aziraphale’s condescending tone. “Shouldn’t this be something you understand implicitly?”

“I just don’t see why this is upsetting you so much. You’re a demon, you do evil, that’s your nature. If she doesn’t know that by now, I rather think she’s the one—well you’re the one in the Wrong, but she’s the one in the wrong, isn’t she?”

He stared at Aziraphale helplessly. How was he supposed to explain what it would _mean_ if Melanie just accepted that evil was Crowley’s essential nature? It was easier for both he and Aziraphale if he was evil, that was true, but Aziraphale didn’t depend on him the way that Melanie did.

Raising a partly human child had clarified a lot about people and angels of either side to him. Crowley hadn’t been born the way Melanie had, small and helpless and completely dependent. He’d had desires and hopes and fears, sure, but he’d never had _needs_ the way she did. If, on the day of his creation, God had dropped Crowley in an empty field to fend for himself, he would have been rather put out, but he’d have had no trouble living through it. Had Crowley, upon snatching Melanie from the convent, left her in that same field, she’d have died simply because she couldn’t so much as roll onto her belly yet. She needed Crowley—really, properly needed him in a way no one ever had—and that need bonded him to her in a way he’d never thought possible even in his highest estimations of his ability to love.

And thing was, apart from Adam and Eve, _every_ human being started out like Melanie had. Anyone who lived to walk and talk only did so because someone had looked after them in some way, and everyone who looked after them had been looked after by someone else. Humans, on an essential level, needed each other. That need could be abused or manipulated to horrifying depths a demon simply didn’t have the context to come up with, but it could also drive humans to heights of good angels weren’t capable of because they’d never depend on anyone or have anyone depend on them the way humans depended on each other.

Crowley wasn’t human, and he’d never needed anyone the way humans did, but he was all Melanie had. He’d been the one to teach her to talk, to read, to cut her own food. He, a demon, had even taught her right from wrong, and all things considered he thought he’d done a bang-up job of it. And in exchange, his daughter loved him without reservation or caveat. It was something Crowley had never experienced in five and a half millennia, and he’d be damned again before he lost it.

It was no wonder Aziraphale couldn’t understand that. He’d _always_ loved with reservation, because that was what an angel had to do. It was what a demon generally had to do, too, but it wasn’t something a father could do if he wasn’t a monster. Well. Not a _human_ sort of monster, anyway.

But he couldn’t figure out how to articulate all that, not to Aziraphale, so he just shrugged and said, “We should get to work.”

* * *

The definitive proof that something was wrong came that afternoon when they went to the tailor's shop to pick up their costumes for the next evening.

Melanie had an in with the tailor's daughter. Or, rather, she had money to bribe the tailor's daughter and was a decent enough flirt. Not _great_ , but so long as the tailor's daughter never actually tried to engage her in conversation or look under the brim of her hat she could fake her way through it well enough.

Luciano normally did his best to tease some conversation out of Melanie and trip her up, but today he was all business. That had admittedly been the general tone of the day, so it wasn't suspicious in itself.

What was suspicious was when the girl had him remove his new tunic during the final fitting so she could make an on-the-spot adjustment. His chemise was loose over his chest, and Melanie immediately noticed three things: his chest was covered in scabbed-over scratches that looked like nail marks, the lead cross he always wore was missing, and there was an angry red burn mark over his heart where it normally hung.

Once the fitting was done, their costumes rolled up safely in her sack, Melanie pulled Luciano aside in an alley. "What happened to your chest?" she asked. "Did you slip on the roof?"

Luciano looked panicked. "What? Oh! Yeah! Yes. I just tripped is all, I'm fine."

She held up a hand, offering it like a tool. "Mind if I take a crack at it? It looks painful."

"Oh," he said. "Sure." He untied the fastenings of his tunic, revealing the scratches and the burn to her.

Melanie placed her fingers between the wounds and frowned at them. The scratches knitted together and disappeared, leaving only smooth skin behind. The burn, on the other hand, remained exactly as it was. Her frown deepened and she tried again.

 _That_ was when she realized something was wrong.

Healing was the power Melanie prided herself most on. It was a good ability to have in a time when a puncture from a rose's thorn could fester into gangrene and plague could kill people in a day. Melanie herself had caught the plague no less than seven times; when she'd caught it as a little girl her father had healed her, and when she came into her abilities at the onset of puberty she quickly learned to shrug it off herself. Cuts, bruises, broken bones? A simple snap of her fingers and they'd be mended. There was only one sort of injury Melanie knew of that she couldn't heal.

As a little kid she’d thought her father was invincible; a good monster who was bigger and scarier than all the other monsters and who could protect her from werewolves and angels and whatever else was lurking in the darkness he was able to see through like daylight. Their house in Nice had been fairly isolated, though, and in Venice she quickly learned exactly how vulnerable he was. He avoided churches, checked homes for wards before entering, went out of his way to avoid saints day festivals lest he bump into something that could hurt him, that sort of thing.

One time when she was eleven they weren’t able to avoid a festival and he got a face full of holy water from a passing priest. It was only the human-made stuff, he reassured her, and it could have been a lot worse if it had been something blessed by an actual angel. She had just spent the last five minutes making increasingly distressed attempts at healing his blistering burns when he said that, so she didn’t appreciate learning exactly how much worse it could have been.

Seeing her father hurt was _wrong_. Part of why she liked the big, complex spells in the angel’s books was she could ensure that the worst thing that happened to him was he couldn't enter a space to be hurt in the first place. She was always careful, even when she wasn't the one doing the warding. When they were out and about together, she was vigilant enough that she sometimes caught hazards before he did.

Luciano had a burn Melanie couldn’t heal, and the lead cross his mother had given him was nowhere to be seen. And, well, that was more than a little troubling. He’d worn the cross as long as she’d known him, so he hadn’t secretly been a demon all along. That meant he was probably possessed. Which meant that now Hell—or someone from Hell—knew about her.

Fortunately, Melanie had four years of deceiving Hell’s best field agent under her belt, so she put on her best poker face and said, “Huh. I really need to sleep more. Sorry, Luca, guess I’m not up for a full healing today.”

She felt badly when panic crossed his face, like he was hoping she’d figure it out just then and help him, but she was mostly relieved that he believed her. Hopefully the demon had, too, because she needed every advantage she could get to come up with a plan quickly.

* * *

Night had fallen, and Venice was alight with celebration. Aziraphale stared out the second floor window facing the canal, listening to the distant din of shouting and laughter. Crowley had been obstinately serious the whole day. Even when they'd sat down to drinks he didn't stop his brooding, and it was beginning to grate on Aziraphale past the point of his tolerance.

He turned away from the window and looked at Crowley. "Have I done something?" he asked.

Crowley straightened in his seat and averted his eyes. After entirely too long he said, "No. Of course not."

"My dear," he said sharply.

Sighing, he admitted, "I suppose you did, but so did I. I'm past it, angel. I just want this whole weekend over with so things can go back to normal."

"Well, not _normal_ ," said Aziraphale significantly. "I am back, after all."

“Hm?” Crowley looked up. "Oh," he said distractedly. “So you are. I assumed after all the grief Melanie’s given you, you were going to bugger off back to England with your books.”

"I don't know if that’s necessary," he said stiffly. "I could always stay. I haven't spent much time in Italy since Rome fell. And, of course, there's you here to thwart."

He shifted uncomfortably. "Er. I'd actually appreciate it if you held off on the thwarting for a bit. I think the kid rather throws off the balance here and I don't need to be called down to Hell a second time."

"I see. Then England does seem like the most natural choice." He forced a smile. "It's probably for the best, really. I don't think I've had much luck endearing myself to the girl thus far."

"I'm sure she'll warm up to you," said Crowley with similar forced cheer.

There was a thump upstairs and they both looked up.

"Speak of the devil," said Aziraphale.

"I wouldn't go that far," said Crowley, standing. "Humans are just like that when they're teenagers."

* * *

Melanie told Luciano she thought stealing a boat was the best way to sneak into her house without being detected. It wasn't, not by a long shot, but it would mean Luciano had to stay with the boat. Her room was warded against demons, and if Luciano couldn't get in the thing inside him would know that she knew, and she was _not_ leading that thing back to her father.

The plan was simple: get inside, figure out what to do with the demon, and get Luciano as far away from the house as possible. It wasn't a complete plan, mind, but it was something she could do for the moment. If Luciano—or the thing controlling him—thought she was doing recon, that would buy her plenty of time to flesh it out.

Melanie was fairly strong, and if she thought about it her powers probably helped her with the climb, so she got up quickly. One of her cats was waiting up on the balcony, the little orange one with the loud meow. Reaching out with her mind as she always did with animals, she begged it to be quiet. It was, and when it saw that Melanie had no food it ran off. She looked back down at the water, watched Luciano round a corner into another canal, and shuddered.

Melanie didn't hate demons as a general rule, but she had a feeling she knew what was inside of Luciano and she didn't like it one bit.

Only a third of Heaven had fallen in the first war, and Hell needed numbers, so it offered tormented human souls an out if they agreed to join Hell's ranks and recruit more souls for them. These were the demons that were little more than ghosts. They haunted houses, they gave people nightmares, and because they weren't assigned bodies of their own they  were a lot more likely to possess people. Melanie had done all the reading she could on them, filling in the gaps with what she could get out of her father without tipping him off that they terrified her enough to keep her up nights.

It wasn't the corrupted souls themselves that scared her so much as the potential future they represented to her. Melanie wasn't completely naïve; oh, she talked a big game about how she'd take whatever Hell threw at her in the name of her integrity, but the honest truth of the matter was that her bravado was a mask she wore to shield her from being ruled by fear the way her father was.

She knew he’d started out as an angel, and she could certainly see that he was still good deep down, but if he'd ever had the righteous might of Heaven in him it had been killed long ago by whatever Hell had put him through. Sometimes she doubted it had ever been there in the first place. Sometimes a romantic part of her hoped it had, and a wearier part of her wondered whether it was better if he'd always been a coward. From what she'd experienced, Heaven could have used a bit of softness. Plus, Hell failing to snuff out her father's gentleness was a more comforting narrative than Hell successfully breaking his spirit. If she was being honest with herself, the truth likely lay someplace depressing in between.

Whatever the case, if her father couldn't be righteous in the face of everything, she’d decided that she would. Maybe that was stupid and she'd get herself dragged to Hell and put to work anyway, but the way she saw it her options were either to take that risk or stand aside and let other people take the fall for her. In her opinion, it was better to be dragged kicking and screaming into damnation than to saunter vaguely downwards by giving in to cowardice—no matter how much the prospect of becoming the thing inside Luciano terrified her.

Now that prospect looked more likely than ever, and she had a decision to make. She didn't know what her father would do if he found out about the demon. The only really brave thing she'd ever learned of him doing was killing Aziraphale for her, and while she didn't think he'd treat the situation the same it wasn't exactly encouraging. And, well, she was still angry with her father and the company he was keeping. Aziraphale had broken her trust within twenty-four hours of touching down on Earth, and Papa probably felt _badly,_ which Melanie couldn't stand. Papa always felt _badly_ , wanted to do better, wanted to keep Melanie safe, but he kept on doing bad things and here Melanie was with a demon on her tail to show for it.

She went into her trunk and began to dig through her notes. Whatever was inside of Luciano couldn’t be allowed to get back to Hell, so it had to die. Fully. This was actually where she was at a disadvantage. Metaphysically, fallen angels were stronger than humans turned demon, but possessing a human body short-term afforded the lower demons protection that a longer-lasting, Hell-manufactured corporation couldn't. She couldn't simply toss some holy water at Luciano and call it a day, and even if she could there was no guarantee the thing wouldn't catch on and make its escape. No, what she needed was to trap it in Luciano, and then build something powerful enough to pierce through its human shield and kill it without hurting her friend.

No sooner than she'd located the first book she thought might be helpful, she heard a knock at the door.

"Melanie?" her father called. "Are you still in there?"

Melanie suppressed a groan. Maybe if she was quiet he'd go away.

"Kid, come on, I know it’s you. That ward doesn't block out the sound of footsteps."

Persistence was key. Even if he knew she was there, he'd give up talking to her eventually if she refused to talk back.

There was a light bump. He was probably leaning against the door, now. "Look, I'm... I can't really say I'm sorry, because it's not as though I can change the way things are. And I'm glad you don't understand what it is I'm protecting you from. I hope you never truly understand that. What I hope you do understand is..." He sighed. "Nevermind. Just be safe out there."

Cursing under her breath, she walked to the door. "What do you hope I understand, Papa?"

"Oh, er, you know," he said, sounding caught off guard and a little embarrassed. "As a rule, demons don't really get to do this whole family thing. And I know it's hard on you, believe me, I do. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but… When you get back, let’s have a talk about all this. Maybe we can figure out something better, because I'm sick to death of fighting with you.”

Melanie considered herself a pragmatist, an impression of herself she'd look back on when she was older and laugh about. But she understood that she wasn’t meant to exist, and that her father wasn’t meant to take care of her the way he had, and that was why he didn't let himself articulate his affection for her the way Luciano’s mother did for him. He showed it in a thousand different ways, and that was mostly enough, but this was as close as he got to outright telling her he loved her and it made her chest ache. It took all her willpower not to open the door and run out to him, to tell him everything that was going on.

She reminded herself that that if she told him about Luciano he'd probably get the angel involved. And maybe he trusted Aziraphale with her life, but Melanie didn't trust Aziraphale with Luciano's. She had people to protect, too.

But she loved her father, too, and she was as sick of fighting as he was, so she said, “Sure, we can talk. I think that’d be good for us.”

"Good," said her father, though he didn't sound particularly satisfied. "And, er, everything else is going well?"

"Yeah," she said with false brightness. "I'm fine, Papa, just got a lot to do."

"Okay," he said. "If you get into any sort of trouble, I can help you out."

"I know," she said. "Really, I'm alright."

"If you're sure," said her father dubiously.

She was. She'd made up her mind already, and she was going to handle Luciano herself. "I have a lot to do," she said. "Do you mind if I get back to it?"

"Sure," said Crowley, echoing her hollow, chipper tone from a moment before. "Of course. Good luck tomorrow."

"Thanks," said Melanie. "Good- Thanks."

The sound of his footsteps faded through the door, and as soon as she couldn't hear them anymore she got to work on her research. Within an hour, she had a plan and a lie to tell Luciano. She snuck back out the window and felt a rare pang of regret that she couldn't pray for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was originally going to post this at the same time as the next chapter, but the next chapter is (of course) taking a little longer to cook than I expected and I want to get some of my girl out into the world after so long. So here's a whole bunch of buildup, with the thing it's building up to in the next chapter hopefully posting tomorrow or Friday!


	6. Chapter 6

Among the fleeting youth and wealth in attendance at the Grandinetti Carnevale Masked Ball, four beings beyond mortality entered. None was certain how the night would play out, but two of them were certain that there wouldn’t be four beings beyond mortality leaving that night.

One of those beings scanned the room for the target they had been sent up from Hell to spy on. When they first looked into the boy’s mind and saw an angel, they thought perhaps that Crawly’s pride had led him to try and surprise Hell with a new recruit to make up for his previous century of slacking. Then they’d seen the girl, seen the way she talked about him like she expected anything good out of him, and it quickly became apparent that Crawly was still slacking because he’d gone soft and allowed the brat—whose existence opened a whole other can of worms—to counteract him. The stupid girl took it so seriously, too. It was hilarious. She was wearing little horns on her gilded half-mask, wearing a black and gold gown as though this made her look more formidable instead if like a child playing pretend. A mockery. Perhaps the girl had expected to have more fun tonight when she bought the outfit, but then she’d just had her plans thwarted by an _angel_ of all things.

The girl herself was grateful for once that her eyes had to be hidden. Ordinarily she hated to hide, but she was barely composed enough to keep her hands from shaking. She couldn’t imagine what her face must have looked like then. She’d made up some errands that she insisted were necessary for Luciano to do, and she used her precious little time to break into the Grandinetti Palace to set her trap. It was airtight, and it was ready with a powerful magic she’d never dared try in close proximity to her father. She didn’t like having it in the same building as him, and her only comfort was that she’d weaved the exception she used for him on her bedroom door into the seal. She wasn’t certain an exception originally designed for a ward would work on something meant to completely obliterate a demon, but it was the best she could do with the little time she had and it probably wouldn’t be necessary anyway. But, to be extra careful, she wouldn’t activate the deadly part of the trap until her own target was already inside.

The other two beings stood to the side of the room, surveying the area. Both were ostensibly searching for their marks for the evening, but neither one of them had his heart in it.

One of them had a goblet of wine in his hand, and he was sipping it sullenly as he cast his eyes about the room without really looking. Then his eyes fell on his companion, who was looking in the opposite direction of one of his own marks.

He took a sip of his wine and cleared his throat. "My dear," he said.

Crowley's head whipped around, the long beak of his black leather mask nearly hitting Aziraphale in the jaw. "Hm?"

"Signor de Claro is over there. Did you not see?"

"Oh. Thanks."

Aziraphale sighed, adjusting his own red and gold harlequin mask. "My dear boy, if I'm going to help you, I'd appreciate you meeting me halfway by focusing."

He shook his head to clear it. "Sorry. I just wanted to see if I could find Melanie."

"Won't she be wearing a mask?" he asked dryly.

His shoulders set back with irritation. "I can recognize my own bloody kid across a room, Aziraphale." He held a hand just above the level of his shoulder. "She's yea high, black hair, built like a ten-year-old, and she's probably wearing something ridiculous. A dress, I'd wager, she always does at events like this. Plus she's probably got that Luciano boy with her," he added, tilting his head up to meet Aziraphale's eyes, "and he sticks out nearly as much as you do."

"Then you should be able to find her quickly if she's in view," said Aziraphale, crossing his arms. "You spoke with her only last night."

"It wasn't much of a conversation," he muttered. "And something was wrong."

He sighed. "Honestly, Crowley, you two have been fighting. Of course something was wrong."

Crowley stared back out into the crowd. "Maybe. I've just got a bad feeling."

* * *

Melanie was, in fact, in the building. She just wasn't in the main ballroom where her father was looking. Instead, she was in a large storage closet on the palace's ground floor. And she had a problem. She needed to get Luciano to stand on a particular spot on the floor without making him or the thing inside of him suspicious.

The thing about planning an exorcism with the intent of completely destroying a demon was that it was difficult to take everything into account on short notice.

Melanie had a good head for magic. She’d fortified the room they were in now with a ward that was in her opinion the cleverest thing she’d ever done. It involved several careful placements of symbols around the room as well as one she hid on the back of the door with a spare tablecloth she’d pinned up. It was all powered by yet _another_ seal that bound that seal to her own magic, something she could afford to spare because of her inhuman nature. It might be putting her in a bit of danger, but the result was worth the risk. The demon inside of Luciano would be able to enter the room, but it wouldn’t be able to leave even with the protection of a human body. All she had to do was activate the final seal that she’d hidden behind a spare chair, and the demon would be toast.

Trouble was, Melanie had used all of her limited time planning the mechanical aspects of her plan she hadn’t stopped to consider the social aspect of her plan.

“So what was it you wanted to show me?” asked Luciano, shutting the door behind him.

“Uhhh…” Melanie looked around the room. She’d deposited her satchel in there earlier, so she made a show of placing it on the chair the kill switch was behind so she could have easy access.

Then Luciano spoke in what she knew by now was the demon’s voice. “Would you hurry up? I haven’t got all night.”

Melanie glanced back, knocked over her satchel, and pushed the chair aside to reveal the seal. “No, you haven’t,” she said, hovering her hand over it. “Your little joy ride’s over, whoever you are.” There. She could always fall back on theatrics.

Luciano paused, removed his plain gilded mask, squinted at the seal, and then laughed. “You’re going to exorcise me, little girl? Do you know what I’m going to tell them when I get back Downstairs? I thought I was just going to find Crawly slacking, but here he is with a _child_ and an _angel._ I couldn’t have asked for a better find. Please, by all means send me down.

“That’s exactly why I’m _not_ sending you Downstairs,” said Melanie sweetly. “There are more permanent ways to get rid of a demon.”

He laughed again and walked to the door. "I'd like to see you try," he said. Then he put a hand on the doorknob and screamed.

Melanie winced the moment he touched the door. Alright, definitely dangerous, but at least it was working.

Luciano turned around and stomped toward her, his face twisted into anger. "What did you _do?_ " he snarled.

She gave him a triumphant smirk. "You're not getting out of here alive."

"Your father must not set much store by infernal unity if you don’t know the gravity of what you’re threatening to do. You’d obliterate one of your own kind?”

"I'm not like you," she said darkly.  She took a deep breath, inched her hand closer to the seal—

There was a ring of metal being pulled from a sheath, and then a cry of pain.

Luciano—the real one, from the looks of it—stared down at his hand in shock. It was gripping the handle of his knife, which he’d just plunged into his side.

Melanie gasped. “Oh my God, Luca,” she whispered.

His head snapped up with an unnatural suddenness, and Melanie was certain his mouth had never had that many teeth in it before. He was grinning. “Maybe you aren’t like me yet,” he said, panting rapturously against the pain, “but I’ll be sure you spend a good, long time ripening on the rack before Hell recruits you.”

Melanie felt a tear drop down her chin and realized it was stupid to keep the mask on. She pulled it off and wiped her eyes.

Luciano threw his head back and gave a good, loud laugh. The motion of his abdomen caused more blood to pool out around the blade in his side. “Pathetic. Half one of the fallen yourself, but the moment I lay a hand on your little friend all you do is stand there and cry. You’ll be quite the catch for me, you know. You won't die naturally. We won’t even have to kill you. We could torment you for centuries right up here, keep you just as you are. And if you die, well, you can go right to the back of the queue like everyone else. Your daddy isn’t exactly in the best position to be calling in favors, is he?”

She clenched her fist and gave him the most defiant sneer she could muster up while crying. "Do you ever shut up?" she asked. Then, with no small amount of hesitation, Melanie did the stupidest thing she'd ever done in her life. She lifted a hand and, using the stores of energy she had that weren't tied up in the binding, she slammed Luciano against the wall.

He yelped, and then he began to laugh again. "Finally,” he said, pulling the knife out of his side with a sick, squishing sound. He stood with it in his hand, its red-slicked tip pointing toward her. Blood began to stream in earnest from his wound. “Let’s see what you can do, demonspawn.”

Melanie waved a hand, pinning him to the wall. “Careful what you wish for,” she growled, and she stepped toward the seal.

Luciano grinned one more time with the thing’s teeth, and then all at once his face sagged and his body collapsed against her grip. “Melanie,” he panted, finally sounding like himself again.

She let go immediately. “Luca?”

“Do it quick, Melanie, I don’t know where it—“

She didn’t hear the rest. All at once there was a roaring in her ears and something with too many teeth in her head. Something that wasn’t her stretched out her power, hitting up against the bonds she’d created and causing both she and the thing inside of her to scream. The thing inside her growled and jerked her head toward Luciano. It lifted her hand, grabbed him with her power, and slammed the already injured boy’s back against the ceiling.

Melanie’s panic turned to anger. She reached out with her mind, tugged against her power, and found that it was still her own. She bore all of it that wasn’t tied up in the binding down on the demon, and then she looked at Luciano as he peeled himself dizzily from the floor. “Luca,” she said, her voice strained, “get out of here. Please.”

He stared at her, absolutely terrified but hesitant to leave. Her resolve didn’t falter, and without a word he got up and limped out of the room.

The second the door shut behind him, Melanie pushed through the demon’s pull and dove for the final seal. Her fingertips just brushed it.

Then her vision was overwhelmed with twisting bodies and flames, her ears filled with screams.

 _A LITTLE TASTE OF WHAT YOU HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO_ , said an ache in her head so sharp she could hear it.

She pushed against the ache, the sights, the sounds, the pain of her energy being stretched thin as the seal continued sapping it. Straining to see what was in front of her, and she began the fight for control of her hand and her power in earnest.

* * *

Aziraphale went to talk to one of his marks, leaving Crowley on his own. He made another half-hearted effort at surveying the crowd, gave up, and decided to at least check and see if he could find his kid. He wouldn't linger or anything, he just wanted to see with his own eyes that the alarm bells going off were all in his head.  If she wasn’t on the main floor, she must be off plotting something in secret, Crowley thought, and that meant the servants’ quarters. Venetian palaces were generally laid out about the same, so it wasn’t hard to find an entrance and slip through it. He kept his mask on in case he bumped into a servant and made his way down the hall.

Then he noticed a pale, shaking bundle of long limbs and stopped.

“Luciano?” Crowley ran over to him and crouched down, taking off his mask. The boy was clutching his side. “Where’s Melanie?” he asked.

The boy groaned with pain. He was barely conscious, but he managed to say, “Demon…”

"Yes, it's me," he said, trying not to panic. There was blood all over Luciano's hands where he was clutching his side. "What happened to you?”

Luciano shook his head. “Not… you… The demon, it…” He winced.

His heart jumped up into his throat. He blinked once, and Luciano’s side knitted itself together. Crowley ignored his gasp of surprised relief and said, “Tell me where to find her.”

The boy lifted a shaking hand and pointed to the door behind him. “But, signor—“

Crowley stood. “Go find the angel. He’s out in the ballroom and he’s wearing a red and gold mask.”

“Signor de Crolli, wait—“

Ignoring him, Crowley opened the door and stepped inside.

* * *

Melanie was just a few more flashes of clarity away from activating the last seal. She was down on her knees now, dragging herself along on her elbows when she could get control of her arms. Everything hurt down to a metaphysical level. She couldn't hear anything in the room for all the screams, could hardly see the seal in front of her through all the horrible images that kept overwhelming her vision. She made one move forward, was halted, and then at long last her fingers made contact. She held herself there with all her strength and _pushed_.

For what could have been seconds or could have been forever, all she knew was pain. Her own scream mingled with the thing's sharp ache of a presence in her mind and the sound of another scream in her ears. Then, suddenly, it was over. She collapsed to the floor, panting, feeling drained in a way she'd never felt in her life. The final seal had obliterated the binding on her trap, so there'd be no pulling more energy from someplace else. She sighed, closed her eyes, and allowed herself to relax.

Then she heard a horrible, familiar whimper and her eyes shot open.

* * *

 

Aziraphale didn't like holding up his end of the Arrangement on the best of days, and he was _not_ having a good day. There was wine, at the very least, but it seemed the drunker he got the more foul his mood.

"But my dear sir," he was saying acidly to the fur-clad noble with ram's horns jutting from his mask, "would your position not be more secure if you wed your daughter to Don Paolini?"

"I don't see why it's your business anyway," the gentleman snapped. "If- Oof!"

The man was pushed out of the way by none other than Melanie's gangly young human friend. "Signor, you have to come with me," he said, panting. His eyes looked sunken, his hair was matted with sweat.

"Young man," the gentleman began to bluster. "If—"

The boy held up a hand to shut the man up. A bloodied hand. The man did indeed shut up, and he backed away into the crowd. He looked into Aziraphale's eyes. "Melanie and Signor de Crolli are in trouble."

Aziraphale didn't hesitate. "Show me," he said.

The boy led him to the servants' quarters, down a hall, and around a corner to a door that was already half-open. The scene was discouraging to put it lightly.

Melanie was just outside the door, propped shakily on her side and trying to drag a nearly unconscious Crowley out of the room. When she heard the footsteps and saw Aziraphale running toward them she collapsed to the floor with relief and let Aziraphale pull her father the rest of the way out of the room.

He cradled the demon's head in his lap and pulled off his mask. "Crowley? Can you hear me?"

Crowley's eyes fluttered open. He managed a brief moment of focus before his eyes became distant. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but then he gagged, turned to the side, and coughed up no small amount of blood and what Aziraphale was fairly certain was something more solid than blood. Aziraphale tried to heal him, just in case, but there was nothing for it with this sort of injury.

Melanie managed to sit up against the wall. "Is he okay?" she asked, sounding small.

Crowley's eyes found Aziraphale's, and he knew they were having the same thought: this corporation wasn't long for the world, and it was going to be up to Aziraphale to handle that. Crowley opened his mouth to try to speak again and quickly gave it up. Aziraphale wasn't certain how much lung he had left to speak with. He looked terrified.

Aziraphale set Crowley's head down gently and walked over to Melanie. Whatever she'd done, she was lucky it hadn't gone much worse. She healed up easily enough, though, and when she was sitting upright he asked, "What happened?"

"Hell sent a scout up," she said. "It possessed Luciano, so I... Is Papa going to be alright?"

He felt cold dread at the pit of his stomach. "Did you banish it?"

She shook her head, her eyes wide and her pupils thin lines. "No. No, it's dead."

Aziraphale sighed, at once relieved and irritated. "And I assume whatever you used to kill it is the cause of this," he said, gesturing at Crowley. "It _should_ have been worse, you understand. Take the boy to the house. Ward it. I'll meet you there shortly."

Melanie hesitated, casting a last glance at her father, but it didn't take long for her to buck up, take Luciano's hand, and run.

He knelt at Crowley's side. He was still somewhat conscious, but Aziraphale doubted that would be true for long. "They'll be sending someone up to investigate, won't they?" he asked.

Crowley nodded almost imperceptibly.

"We'll have to leave Venice, then. I can take her to England with me and keep her out of trouble until then." He took a deep breath, and then he took Crowley's hand. He held it until he felt Crowley's presence slip from his body, and then he whispered, "Do come back quickly, my dear."

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

The night of the Grandinetti Ball, Aziraphale secured a boat for the morning and a horse and cart for the rest of the journey. Meanwhile, Melanie and Luciano stopped by the inn to pick up his mother. If demons were coming to Venice, they figured, neither of the Propizios should be around for them to find. They all worked together loading up Aziraphale’s books and whatever worldly possessions and gold for the Propizios that Melanie could fit. Then they combed Crowley’s things for anything they thought might be of sentimental value. There wasn’t much, so with the cart packed the four of them set out for the ferry. 

With two humans and Melanie in tow, Aziraphale couldn’t travel as quickly as he might have liked. It was also deathly quiet. Signora Propizio was in too much shock for much conversation, and the two younger passengers didn’t seem to want to do anything except lean on one another and whisper in the back of the cart. 

The Propizios didn't want to leave Italy. Signora Propizio was illiterate and Luciano had just enough letters to give him an advantage, so long as he was working in his native tongue. Dragging them all the way to England wouldn't have been right. They stopped in Verona and found an inn for the humans to live in until they could buy a place to live. Melanie remarked how much nicer it was than their old place in Venice, how many fewer rats there’d be away from the water. It wasn’t a tearful goodbye, but only because she and Luciano were being brave for one another. She promised to write, and to come visit when she could, and only when Aziraphale had driven them out of the city did he catch her wiping a tear away. 

Their route to England was one Aziraphale had taken countless times over the centuries. It would take them from Italy directly into France, through Lyon, and up through Paris to Calais, where they’d catch the ship that would take them across the English Channel. With the sorts of detours Aziraphale liked to take away it was usually at least a two months’ journey, and within eight hours’ distance from Florence Aziraphale realized he was going to have to actually _talk_ to the girl if he wanted to keep his sanity even if he opted out of the detours. 

He didn’t dislike Crowley’s daughter, exactly. She was only a child, after all, and she seemed to be a generally well-intentioned person. It would have been uncharitable—unbecoming of his divine nature, even—to feel an honest distaste for the girl. He had standing orders to kill her, yes, but that would have been true regardless of her personality or the alignment of her supernatural parentage. And he understood that she was upset. How could she not be, the poor thing, watching her father go like that and then being dragged away from everything she knew due to the machinations of Heaven and Hell for the second time in her young life?

It was just that she so clearly disliked Aziraphale, and she made no secret of it even though it was her own blessed fault she was stuck with him instead of home with Crowley. If she’d just done the responsible thing and told one of them about Luciano, Aziraphale could have sorted it instantly. And she didn't have to express her grief by taking it out on him when he was just trying to keep her safe until Crowley got back. All she did was sit in the back of the cart and read, and when Aziraphale tried to make conversation she looked at him like he'd just let out a rude belch. It was exhausting.

Still, they had a long journey together and it got rather boring driving all the time, so he persisted. "What are you reading?" he asked as they were driving west toward Milan.

Predictably, Melanie glared up at him for a moment before going back to her book.

They'd been traveling for ages, by then, and that was the moment Aziraphale decided he was more bored than he was afraid of upsetting the girl. "You know, driving a wagon might be a useful skill for you to learn. I have other means of travel, but if you're bound to that physical form you might want to know how to be self-sufficient in future."

Again, yellow eyes drifted up and tried to bore holes into Aziraphale's skull.

"I just wondered whether you might like to learn," he said weakly. He turned his eyes back to the road, and for a while there was quiet.

Then he heard the creaking of Melanie standing up in the cart. She leaned against the back of Aziraphale's bench and said, "Alright, I'm bored enough. Fuck it."

He turned around and fixed her with a stern look, but all she did was flutter her eyelashes innocently over her serpentine eyes. "Very well," he said, and he pat the seat next to him.

Melanie made a show of hopping over the seat, her feet only just catching her weight and keeping her from going over the bench and under the cart.

Aziraphale let out a small cry of alarm. "Do be careful! Imagine if your father were to come back and learn you'd died showing off like that." Though he hardly imagined Crowley would be surprised if that were to occur.

Something dark crossed her face and she turned toward the horse. "Right. So how do you drive?"

"Well," he began, "this is a decent enough horse. She'll probably listen to verbal commands." Then he paused. "I could, er, translate for you, I suppose. I must admit I don't know what commands she was trained to follow. You see, angels have an inherent link with all living creatures, and when we—"

"So you talk to the horse," said Melanie in a bored tone. "Great. I can do that."

He tilted his head at her. "Can you? Crowley's always—"

"Yeah, I continue not to be a demon. And angels aren't that special to animals. They're just happy when something human-looking takes the time to explain itself."

"You understand you can only do that because you're half an angel—"

"Oh, I'm half an _angel_ now," she muttered derisively.

"—and, furthermore, _I_ don't talk to animals, and I'm certain that _you_ don't, either," he pressed on. "It's more... pushing a feeling or desire, and making sure that feeling or desire is understood. And listening back, of course."

"Uh-huh," said Melanie slowly, "so talking."

"Fine," Aziraphale sighed. "Let's move on to how to sit properly while you have the reins, shall we?"

Melanie's sour attitude didn't let up, but Aziraphale appreciated it when she started offering to drive for longer and longer periods of time. If he didn't talk to her, she didn't talk to him, and soon Aziraphale was able to get lost in his books during the day and relax in the evenings while Melanie slept at inns and hostels at night.

He was enjoying himself so much, in fact, that he didn't notice they'd gone the wrong way until he closed his book at sundown one evening and saw that a seagull was staring at him from the side of the wagon.

"Er, Melanie?" he called. "Where precisely are we?"

He watched the set of her shoulders hunch up guiltily. "About ten miles outside of Nice," she answered, her voice quiet.

" _Nice?_ " Aziraphale repeated, his voice rising. "And what, may I ask, are we doing ten miles outside of your childhood home?"

The wagon stopped, and she turned around in her seat. The glare was still ever-present, but there was something apprehensive behind it now that he hadn't seen their whole trip. She took a deep breath and said, "There's a convent not far from here. I... I need to go there."

"If you're thinking of giving yourself over to the Church, my girl, I can think of several reasons why that might be inadvisable."

"There's someone I need to see," she snapped. 

"Who—?" He stopped. There was only one person it could possibly be. "Why on earth would you want to see _her?_ "

Melanie looked stricken, and when her lip began to quiver she turned around and started the horse forward again. "Just shut yourself in with your books like you always do," she said. "I have to do this."

They stopped the cart a little later, and Melanie hopped over the seat and into the back of the cart. This wasn't unusual, as she usually traveled in hose and a tunic during the day and changed into a dress when they were staying in Church lodgings, but this time she kept casting nervous glances at Aziraphale.

He sighed. "You have some sort of plan, I assume."

"Kind of," she said. “I know I have her nose. She should be about forty now, I think. So that’s a start.”

"This is completely ridiculous," he protested. "You have no right to go barging into that poor woman's life like this to satisfy your own curiosity."

Melanie's jaw dropped, and her voice grew cold. "I'm sorry, I don't have a right? She's my mother."

"Yes, Melanie, and as you might recall, you aren't meant to exist. It's been sixteen years. She's probably spent your whole life trying to move past it."

"I'm still her daughter!"

"By birth, perhaps, but this woman is a stranger. Melanie, she—"

Melanie's face hardened, her chest rising and falling as her anger quickened her breath. "If a stranger's the only family I have in the world, right now, I'll take a stranger."

It took all of Aziraphale's strength not to roll his eyes. "Your father's coming back, you understand. He isn't really dead."

"You were gone ten years," she snarled. "How long is Papa going to be gone? He's already gone to Hell once, and that lasted a week, and when he came back that was when everything started going wrong because of whatever it was they did to him down there." She took a deep breath. "And then _you_ came along, and now he’s down there again probably facing worse."

He sputtered. "You can't possibly blame me for what happened."

"Not entirely," she said quietly, "but you sure didn't help. So you're going to help now, got it?"

Aziraphale went to protest again, and then he remembered:

_“She was going to have her drowned.”_

_“Then you should have let her.”_

He grimaced. "Melanie... What do you know about your mother? Apart from her age and her..." He gestured vaguely. "...nose?"

"Her name before she became a nun was Marionette de Saint-Cirq," Melanie recited. "She and my father were friends, and they got drunk one night, and my mother is a widow so when she had me and couldn't keep me she joined a convent."

"Is that exactly what your father told you?"

"I mean, it was basically that. We haven’t talked about it in years, but that’s what I remember," she said, eyeing him suspiciously. "Why? Do you know something?"

Aziraphale could admit that delicate social situations weren't always his forte. This, unfortunately, was a social situation that required an especially deft touch. As far as Melanie was concerned, her father was dead and she was about to meet the only family she had left, and she had no idea that this particular member of her family had welcomed her to the world by trying to have her killed. And he, Aziraphale, someone Melanie seemed none too keen on, was the only person who could warn her of this. Either he had to be the one to give her the bad news, or he had to hope that the night passed without incident. Neither was a particularly attractive option, so he chose the path of least resistance: he lied. 

"No," he said. "I just never got the full story from him myself."

Melanie normally kept her hat on and took dinner in her room at hostels, but tonight she pulled out a bit of sheer cloth that was just opaque enough to hide her eyes and improvised a veil out of it. And, without further discussion, Aziraphale went along with it. The whole thing was going to end in disaster, he was certain, but he offered to drive the rest of the way to give Melanie a chance to think, and when they arrived he did most of the talking for them. 

Her mother was quite easy to pick out from among the nuns who greeted them as they pulled in front of the abbey. She was pale and round-faced with dark eyebrows and warm brown eyes, but she did have Melanie’s long, upturned, fox-like nose, and she eyed the girl’s veil with barely-disguised distrust whenever Melanie wasn’t looking.

He did his best making small talk about the roads and their plans at dinner, doing his best to steer the nuns away from asking Melanie any questions. Her mother just continued to stare silently at her, never saying a word, and then dinner was over and it was time to retire to their rooms. And, to his great displeasure, Melanie’s mother volunteered to show them where they’d be sleeping for the night. 

They were shown to two bedrooms that shared a wall with one another. The nun shooed Aziraphale into his first, and the first thing he did was put his ear to Melanie’s wall and boost his hearing with a bit of divine intervention. 

He heard a door shut behind them, and then he heard the woman speak, “I’m sorry if this is strange,” she said, “but you remind me of someone I knew a long time ago. Does the name Antoine de Craulit mean anything to you?”

Melanie drew in a sharp breath. “It does,” she said, her voice so small it was almost a whisper. 

There was a slight shuffle and a clacking of wooden beads, and then the woman said, “Show me your eyes.” 

There was a flutter of cloth, and a gasp. 

“Why are you here?” she asked. Her voice was shaking. 

“I- I just wanted to—“

“And in this mockery of a form. Don’t play dumb, Antoine—or whatever your real name is—I know it's you. It’s dead, you know, the child. It was thrown in the well the moment it was born.”

“…What?”

She laughed wildly. “Now, don’t try to make me feel guilty about it! You were the one who _begged_ me not to have it when I told you I was with child. So tell me, Antoine, why are you here after all these years looking old enough to be our little abomination? Bringing plague to Lyon and killing my husband wasn’t enough, you had to let me live a whole life and then come back? What, are you going to come for this abbey next? For my sons?”

“I- I’m not… He didn't bring any plague. Sorry, he said _what_ when you told him?”

Aziraphale couldn’t take it anymore. He got up, left his room, opened the door, and before the woman could do anything he placed his hands on her head and overwhelmed her with the warmth of his divine presence so he didn't have to waste time explaining that he was an angel. Then, he let go.

“Listen to me,” he said, “I have been charged with the safekeeping of this child. She came here to meet you, that’s all. She isn’t Crowley, she's the daughter you bore, and she just wants to… Well, frankly, I think it’s best Melanie explains what it is she wants because I don’t know what goes on in the girl’s head, but she means you no harm.” He let go and looked at Melanie. 

“It might be best to be completely honest in this case,” he said to her, his voice firm and perhaps a bit more scolding than he intended. “It sounds as though it might bring your mother some peace to know the whole story, and we don’t want another Claudette, do we?”

She shook her head and exchanged a glance with her mother. The woman was holding a rosary up to Melanie like a shield, and she lowered it now and crossed herself. 

“Forgive me,” said Melanie’s mother to Aziraphale. “I… Yes, I think I’d like to hear the whole story.” She turned to Melanie. “If you’re willing to tell it.”

Melanie nodded. She looked at Aziraphale. “Thanks,” she said. “I think I’ve got it from here.”

“I’ll just be in the next room if you need anything,” he said, and he left the two of them alone.

It was a long time before he heard Melanie's door open and the sound of footsteps fading down the hall. For a while he just sat on his bed, debating whether he should go in and check on Melanie. He put an ear to the wall and heard the soft rhythm of her crying.

Oh, what would Crowley do in this scenario? He thought back to what little he'd seen of Crowley's parenting style. He was direct with her, that was certain. Honest. He'd probably have told her the thing about the well before she went and barged back into her mother's life, and that would have prevented this from happening in the first place. It was too late for that, though, and now she was just upset. What would Crowley do if she was upset? Well, he kept going on about not being able to find her just before he snuffed it, didn't he? And he went up and talked to her when she snuck back into the house even though they were fighting.

He wondered whether it was worth going to her when he was probably the last person she wanted to see, but if he was missing Crowley he was certain he could at the very least find common ground with her there. He stood, took a moment to groan to himself, and went to knock on Melanie's door.

"It's me," he said softly.

"Oh, fuck me," came the muffled, tear-swollen reply. A moment later the door opened, and a puffy-eyed teenager opened the door. "Here to say you told me so?"

“Goodness!" he cried, affronted. "My dear girl, I know we don't have the warmest relationship, but you can't honestly think I'm so cruel as all that."

Melanie sniffed. “Sorry.“

“May I come in?” he asked softly.

She stood to the side and shut the door behind them. Then she sat down on the bed, dabbed her eyes on her sleeve, looked at him. Her slit pupils nearly inky black circles in the dim candlelight. “You knew what they tried to do to me here, didn’t you?”

Aziraphale looked away guiltily. “Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t know whether I should be the one to tell you.”

“It’s okay.” She swallowed. “Did you know about the rest of it?”

“Which 'rest of it' are you referring to?"

Melanie blew her nose on her sleeve. “When she told him she was going to have me, he told her to, um." She licked her dry lips. "He told her not to have me."

Aziraphale winced. "Ah. No, I didn't know about that, although it's hardly surprising given the circumstances."

Even at her lowest, Melanie managed to give Aziraphale a withering stare that made him feel even lower. "You're really awful at this, do you know that?" 

Aziraphale opened his mouth to protest.

Then, to his surprise, she started to laugh. "I mean, I've never thought about it like that, but you're not wrong. My mother used to have this great life with her fun husband and her three sons—which means I have three brothers I didn't know about, by the way, which is just _fantastic_ to get to live with from now on—and then of course she's had to live at the nunnery that took her in to help her dispose of her literal demon baby, so all the nuns here know, and there was no one to take care of me except my father, and you had to die, and now he's..." A single sob racked her small frame, and she took a few deep breaths as tears started squeezing out of her eyes in earnest. "I just wish I could ask him, you know? I mean, he's never acted like he didn't want me, but it's like you said. I'm not meant to exist. Of course he didn't want me, and now he's in Hell and it's all my fault."

At last, she gave in. She folded her arms around herself and let her crying run at full force.

Not knowing what else to do, Aziraphale sat on the bed beside her, said, “Come here,” and pulled her into a tight hug. He stroked her hair as she sobbed against his chest.

"What happened to Crowley wasn't your fault," he said. "He could have done more to make you understand what was at stake, and... Well. Perhaps I could have behaved in a way that was more worthy of your trust so that you might have come to me when there was danger. The business of Heaven and Hell isn't something a young girl should have to concern herself with, and you were only trying to do a bit of good. And as for your father, Melanie, of course he wants you. In five thousand years I've never seen him fight for anything as fiercely as he has for you, and it's his _job_ to fight me. If that’s what he said to your mother, well, you simply weren’t a person to him yet. His priorities were different, and they changed the moment you were born, didn’t they? What matters now is that he loves you as much as someone like him is capable of loving anyone."

Melanie stopped crying and pulled away from him. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” he asked, sincerely confused. He thought he'd done a rather good job of comforting her, considering how out of his depth he was.

"Act like Papa doesn't have the same kinds of feelings as you or me. I know he's your enemy, technically, but he's your friend, too. It's almost like you don't _want_ him to have feelings. I mean, why…?" Then her eyes widened. "Oh."

Aziraphale's heart raced. "What?"

Melanie sat up straight, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "Nothing. Nevermind, that's normal angel stuff, right? I bet you guys talk about every demon like that."

"Talk about every demon like what? What is strange about what I've said?”

The girl looked up at him, looking to Aziraphale as tiny as she'd been when he first met her. "Are you two…? I mean, is that why you don't like me? Because for me to exist, he had to be with someone else?"

Aziraphale was always careful not to think in swears, lest he be tempted to say them aloud, but the moment he realized what Melanie was assuming his internal monologue unleashed a string of curses that would have made a boatswain blush. "No, no, Melanie, I don't dislike you!" His voice was high and strained. "We've just got off on the wrong foot, that's all."

She raised an eyebrow, looking relieved to have a reason to do so. "That's nice to hear," she said, "but that's not what I asked."

"No," he said flatly, "we're not."

Melanie pursed her lips. "You love him, though, don't you? And don't give me some excuse about angels loving everyone, I've _met_ you."

"I- Er- Well, he's my friend. My oldest friend, in fact. Of course I love him in that sense."

"Look. After you, I'm probably the person who knows my father best. I know he does that stupid thing where he thinks the ground's going to open up underneath him if he ever says, 'I love you,' to anyone, but he sure is good at showing it in other ways even when it would probably be better for him not to show it at all. Now, unless you have some horror story from eons past that sincerely makes you think he's a heartless monster, I think you're lying to yourself. And I think that's to protect yourself from feeling something you think you shouldn't."

“Yes, it’s a very dangerous _friendship_ to maintain! The Arrangement—“

She crossed her arms. "But you don't deny that he's your friend; you deny that he might be able to love you. And, if anything, having him be your friend would make the Arrangement a whole lot easier to justify to yourself than working with an enemy you've fallen in love with." She looked as though she was going to continue, but then she seemed to stop and consider what she'd just said. "Oof. That sounds like a nightmare, actually. You poor bastard."

Aziraphale stared at her in the half-darkness, searching her face for the slightest hint of doubt. There was none. "And what would you think if that were the case?" he asked softly. "This is your father we're talking about, and I know we don't… get on."

She shrugged. "We both love him, right? And he loves both of us. We could try to get along for his sake."

He took a deep breath. "I just need to be certain you understand how dangerous this is for me. I could fall over it."

Melanie smiled. "And you could fall for refusing to smite me, yet here you are taking me to England alive. If you can do that for my father, I can spare him the guilt of pulling you down to Hell with his… charm? Good looks?" She wrinkled her nose with distaste. "I don't know, he's my father, I'm not going to pretend to understand the appeal."

To his surprise, Aziraphale found himself laughing. For over five thousand years he’d kept this buried so deep even he forgot he was hiding anything half the time, and the girl had dug it out in a matter of weeks. It made sense, he supposed; before Melanie came along the only person who knew that he and Crowley were even friends was Crowley himself. He wondered whether it was obvious to Crowley, and he’d simply avoided asking out of kindness or fear. Maybe he even—no. Nothing good would come of that line of thought. 

He glanced at her, feeling his age for once. "Just know that I don't intend to act on, er, what you've learned tonight. There are things your father and I can't ever do because of what we are, but you're human. And I think that's given your father permission to do things a demon isn't meant to, and that means he can show you all the best parts of himself. I don't think he takes that for granted, so you shouldn’t let yourself, either." He gave her a sad smile. "You're very fortunate."

"Thanks," said Melanie. She let out a shaky sigh and looked at him, her strange eyes wide and pleading. "Can we pretend tonight never happened? If my father found out what my mother told me, it would kill him."

"Yes," Aziraphale agreed tiredly. "I think the less said about it the better."

The next morning, Marionette helped the two of them set their wagon up. They were nearly ready when she told them to wait, ran off, and came back a few minutes later with a large jar stopped with a cork.

She held it out shyly to Melanie. "It's honey," she said stiffly, "from our hives."

Melanie took the jar. She was wearing her veil again, but from the length of time it was clear that she was memorizing every feature of her mother's face. "Thank you," she said at last, and she smiled.

They set off after that, stopping once to let Melanie change into her preferred riding clothes, and this time Melanie sat up on the bench with Aziraphale and actually talked to him. Quite a lot, in fact. 

Crowley had always told her stories about him, it turned out, and she wanted to hear his impressions of what Adam and Eve had been like, and what had been in the Library of Alexandria, and just how thickly Ancient Roman was the ridiculous accent Crowley had taught her to speak Latin with? Aziraphale, in turn, was thrilled to hear about the time Crowley had leaned on the railing of a bridge and fallen into a canal, and how he'd let Melanie win a soul when she was fourteen because he'd knocked her favorite hat out a window and lost it in the water, and how when she was small he used to turn into a snake, slither around her shoulders, and let her wear him like a scarf around the house.

Things were better after that. Some days they were content to take turns driving or reading in silence, some days they chatted, and on bad days Aziraphale was always sure to provide Melanie with as much distraction as he knew how. They started going off on detours, visiting the great libraries and cathedrals of France. Paris took a whole week between all the exploring they both wanted to do. And of course they still argued, sometimes seriously about the best route or whose turn it was to drive, or about something terse one had said to the other. They argued about poetry and magic, too, which it turned out was quite a bit of fun to do with Melanie in particular. She was as stubborn as Aziraphale when it came to her opinions on things, but she was also knowledgeable enough that she could always meet him half way and give him an honest, entertaining challenge.

They would even, on occasion, delve into ineffability. It seemed Melanie's brush with Hell had opened her up to the shades of grey of the world. Her beliefs hadn't changed; she was still convinced that Heaven was irredeemably unjust and that Hell was only evil as an extension of Heaven's injustice, but she was a bit more nuanced about his and Crowley's respective parts to play in that system. She seemed rather subdued about the whole thing, actually, and a bit lost, but it also meant that she and Aziraphale could have a conversation about the nature of Good and Evil without it descending into a shouting match like the one she'd had with Crowley.

By the time they reached the French border, Aziraphale was pleased to discover that he had become rather fond of Melanie over their journey together, and she of him, it seemed. Whenever Crowley returned, he hoped he'd be pleased to see how well they'd gotten on in his absence. 


	8. Chapter 8

Crowley knew the moment he got down to Hell that he was lucky to be alive, with or without a body, and that he probably had one of Melanie’s little lines of magic based around his sigil to thank for that. He was weak, barely able to maintain a presentable metaphysical form in front of his superiors. Until he stabilized, he really wasn't certain he'd survive at all.

His own condition and the conspicuous absence of the scout they’d sent up made it easy for Crowley to plead his case to Hell. The lower demon had been fried to death even in a human body, the strongest protection a demon had, and as far as they knew Crowley was only able to escape complete annihilation using his wits and unique experience on Earth.

He'd never had much of a head for all that occult stuff, he reminded them, so sending him back up to investigate this new, powerful form of exorcism would be a waste of his and Hell’s time, but if they could just hurry up and give him a new body and a chance to do what work he could while his power was depleted, he’d try to make the fifteenth century his most productive yet, he swore it on the Dark Lord’s name. Privately, he made a mental note to never, ever piss Melanie off enough that she might actually _want_ to hurt him—although, knowing Melanie, that really would take an awful lot.

Poor kid. All in all, he was rather pleased with himself about the whole thing. The complete depletion of his power was frustrating and when he did get a body he was constantly dizzy, nauseous, and fatigued, but this was the smoothest discorporation he’d dealt with in millennia. It only took him six months to get a body, everyone was too unsettled by what had happened to bother punishing him, and he even got Hell to pop him back up in London instead of where he’d died to help him avoid the magician who’d killed him.

The magician in question, on the other hand, was a young girl who’d just spent a significant period of her short life without the only family she had, and this after witnessing something that at the very least _appeared_ to be the death of her father at her own hands. And he’d missed her seventeenth birthday, too, which felt pretty rotten. He considered picking up a present for her while he walked around Westminster asking if anyone had seen a tall man and a young person in a big hat out and about, but he didn’t have any gold and if he tried to use any magic he was halfway certain he’d pass out in the muck. And if he _didn’t_ get run over by a cart as a result, he didn’t have the power to miracle away the unspeakable filth that paved London’s streets, and what sort of entrance would that be?

A boy about Melanie’s age was able to tell him where Aziraphale’s new house was, and ten minutes later he was standing at the door. He hesitated a moment, considering what he might find.

It had been a comfort to die knowing Melanie was in safe hands, but for all he was fond of that bastard of an angel he wasn’t convinced that they were particularly _capable_ hands. Melanie was a sensitive kid, and Aziraphale… _wasn’t_ , and, well, Melanie wasn’t the most forgiving of moral failings at the best of times. She’d probably been a nightmare to deal with after what she’d been through. In all likelihood Aziraphale was going to chuck her straight at Crowley and slam the door in their faces the second he saw he was back. He wouldn’t blame him if he did; Melanie wasn’t Aziraphale’s kid. It was good of him to take her in at all, and now that Crowley was back he could recover for a bit and then see to it that his daughter never went through anything like that again.

It was a cloudy day in early September, so the windows were shut, but he could hear the faint sound of somebody inside plucking tunelessly on a lute. Melanie must have picked up a hobby while he was away. An encouraging sign, he hoped. He knocked on the door.

The music upstairs stopped playing, but when the door opened it was Aziraphale who was standing there. His eyes widened when he realized who it was, and he didn't smile, but his eyes crinkled with joy and relief.

"You're early," he said, his voice hushed.

Crowley shrugged. "I pulled a few strings."

"What do you—oh, goodness!" Aziraphale exclaimed as a dark, slight figure pushed him aside and launched herself directly at Crowley.

"Papa!" she shouted, and she threw her arms around him.

He felt his head swim and his stomach roll as she made impact, but she was holding him tightly enough that he was able to use her weight to keep from toppling over. She buried her head in the crook of his shoulder and held herself firmly in place, warm against the cool, damp England air and clutching him as though he might float away if she let go. 

"Hey, kiddo," he said. He pressed her closely against him with one arm, tucked her head under his chin, and stroked the short hairs at the nape of her neck fanning out from the base of her low braid.

She took in a deep breath and said in a muffled voice, "You smell like rotten eggs."

He laughed and held her tighter. "I missed you so much."

"I'm so, so sorry, Papa" she said, the rough emotion of her voice vibrating against his chest.

"Hey, hey, enough of that." He tucked a finger under her chin and lifted her head up to look in her eyes, not quite tearful but certainly on their way. "You've got nothing to apologize for, alright?"

Then, to Crowley's complete shock, Aziraphale put a hand on Melanie's shoulder. "Let’s let him in off the street," he said gently to her. He cast a worried look at Crowley, but he had enough tact not to say anything about the worrying dimness of his aura in front of Melanie. She certainly didn’t seem to have noticed.

Melanie wanted to give Crowley a tour of the house, and Aziraphale gently navigated her to catching up in the parlor first, making up an excuse about the difficulty of the journey after getting a new corporation. A lie, Crowley noted with satisfaction, even if it was a well-intentioned one.

The lie turned out to be part of a pattern, and that pattern was that, while he was away, Aziraphale had somehow befriended Melanie. Apparently they’d agreed to only use English in the house while Melanie was learning, and she plowed through the English language with gusto to recount to Crowley all the exciting things they got up to on the road to Calais, allowing Aziraphale to correct her without protest.

“So we goed to Paris,” she began, her accent thick as a roux.

“Went to Paris,” Aziraphale corrected gently.

“Went to Paris,” she repeated. “‘ave you seen the…? Zut. Le nouveau cathédrale. Nôtre-Dame de Paris.” She paused. “Alors, Aziraphale said it was new. This could means it is 'undred years old.”

Crowley smiled. “It’s about fifty. And it’s ‘the new cathedral.’”

“‘Ca-tee-dral,’” she repeated. “Ugh. I can’t do the 'T-H' sound right. You ‘ave to always be ‘Papa,’ I can’t say ‘Faddére.’”

“Give ‘Anthony’ a go while you’re at it," he teased. “Surely you can say your old dad’s name.”

She sat in irritated silence for a moment, and then she muttered, “Bordel de merde.”

Aziraphale sighed heavily.

Crowley grinned. “We’ll have to go over swears later. I’m sure Aziraphale's neglected that crucial part of your English education.”

Aziraphale fixed Crowley with a withering look and pat Melanie's hand without taking his eyes off him. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, my dear. Your father couldn’t say my name properly for the first century or so we knew each other.”

 “Ohhh,” she crowed with a wicked grin. “‘ _Assssss_ iraphale?’”

“Yes,” said Crowley, looking Aziraphale dead in the eye. “Another vocabulary lesson, Mel, the English word for ‘baudet’ is ‘ass.’ I was being prescient.”

She threw her head back and cackled. “Does Ant’ony mean anything rude? Please say yes.”

“Mostly it just sounds Polish,” he said. “So, alright, you saw Nôtre Dame.”

Melanie lit up, and she spoke so quickly Aziraphale didn’t have time to correct her many mistakes.

He didn’t much feel like eating or drinking, and he certainly didn’t _need_ to, but he was struggling to stay alert and both Melanie and Aziraphale kept casting worried glances at him. Melanie went up to bed eventually, and as much as Crowley wanted to do the same, he thought it best to talk to Aziraphale.

They sat down in front of the fire in the parlor, and Crowley forced down something nasty that had been creeping up his throat.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “I think I’ve discovered something interesting about my lot’s corporations, angel. Apparently gut health is tied to spiritual health. Bloody hell, don’t let me eat for the next while.”

Aziraphale sighed, leaned over, and put a hand on his knee. Warmth coursed through Crowley’s body and while the nausea didn’t go away, he did feel better.

“Thank you.”

“You’re…” Aziraphale swallowed. “I’ve seen you in a bad way before, but never quite like this. Crowley, you’re _flickering._ ”

He shrugged. “Hell hadn’t seen anything like this either. Spooked the—well, I suppose it _did_ spook the Hell out of them. It’s how I was able to get back up so quick.” A tired grin spread across his face. “It’s hard not to be impressed when someone on oblivion’s doorstep begs you to let you go back to work, eh?”

“Oh, Crowley, you didn’t tell them you’d be working, did you? I think an ordinary human’s got more inherent power to them than you have at the moment.” He crossed his arms. “That’s all going to fall on me, isn’t it?

Crowley grimaced apologetically. “I had to get back up here for Melanie.” He bit his lip. “How’s she been? Be honest.”

“Oh, keeping busy,” said Aziraphale, averting his eyes. ”Plenty to learn, plenty to see.”

“Aziraphale.”

He looked up with a pained expression. “How do you think? Oh, I’ve done the best I can to do what you do because what she's really wanted all this time is for you to come back, and she puts on a rather obstinate brave face, but I know there are things she doesn't tell me. I’ve tried to reassure her time and again that she did right by you writing that exception in, I really have, but she doesn't even want to discuss it, and…”

Crowley let Aziraphale go on without interruption. He _wanted_ to interrupt him. However, his first impulse was to kiss him, his second was to try and articulate to Aziraphale how bloody much he loved him for _caring_ that much, and his third was to apologize for secretly doubting he'd be any good at caring for Melanie at all. He didn't think any of those would be particularly welcome, so he just sat there like an idiot listening to Aziraphale dither away.

“…and she keeps going off exploring on her own without telling me, and I do so worry because her English is coming along, but it wasn’t in the beginning and—oh, but I _am_ going on. You need to rest.”

Crowley rubbed his face. “I’d sleep the whole century, if you let me, but that wouldn’t be fair to you or the kid.” He took a moment to figure out how to say what he wanted to say next as platonically as possible. “Thank you for taking care of her. I keep cocking it up and you keep getting stuck with the consequences of my mistakes. I hope I can do better for both of you from here on out.”

“Oh, Crowley,” said Aziraphale. He took his hand, something that wasn’t strange in that time but that set Crowley’s heart off at full speed all the same. “I think it’s safe to say I share at least some of the blame. After all, the common denominator in everything that’s happened is that either you or Melanie didn’t trust me enough to tell me something crucial.” He took a deep breath. “I hope I can be more worthy of your trust in the future.”

Crowley looked down at their hands, his knuckles enveloped in the large, soft expanse of Aziraphale’s palm, his narrow fingers wrapping instinctively around Aziraphale's. His six months in Hell had been better than usual, but they’d still been Hell. He was as ill as he could ever remember being, and demons didn’t exactly have the best bedside manner in the universe. And he really wasn’t a crying sort, he’d never seen much of a point in indulging that sort of emotion when his problems were mostly things he just had to suck it up and make the most of, but he was exhausted and completely overwhelmed with all his conflicting emotions, and if he let himself he’d fall into Aziraphale’s arms right there and weep.

So he let go, and he gave Aziraphale a smug smirk. “An _apology._ I’ll be blessed. Guardianship has made you soft, angel.”

“Really!” Aziraphale scoffed, pulling his empty hand back. “I’m trying to be sincere with you, my dear boy.”

Crowley stood. “And I’m too bloody tired for any of that. I’m going to get some sleep. Goodnight, angel.” He paused. “Where the hell do I sleep in this house?”

Aziraphale allowed himself a smug smirk of his own. “I’ll show you.”

He let Aziraphale lead him upstairs, and he was too tired to take proper stock of the room. Instead he reminded Aziraphale to wake him the next day, miracled his clothes off, crawled into bed, and fell asleep before he could recall his head hitting the pillow.

* * *

He awoke the next day to his bedroom door bursting open.

“Papa?” asked a small, alarmed voice.

Crowley grunted in the affirmative and rolled over to his other side, his eyes remaining shut. Somehow sleeping had just made him feel worse.

Melanie let out a sigh of relief. “I knocked like ten times,” she scolded in French.

“Ssssorry,” he said. "Sssssleeping pretty deeply.” He opened his eyes, yawned, and sat up. “Morning.”

She snorted. “Afternoon, more like. Aziraphale says you’re pretty sick from the whole almost getting fried thing.”

Bloody hell, he was going to kill him. “Oh,” he said neutrally. “Yeah?”

“Don’t look like that, I got it out of him,” she said, obviously resisting rolling her eyes. “I won’t make it a thing if you won’t.”

Crowley let himself relax. “Wasn’t planning on it. It’s impressive, what you did with that spell.” He smiled. “I don’t think anyone’s ever bothered specifying a demon not to kill before. Must mean you care about me.”

She laughed. “Don’t make me regret it. Speaking of magic, I hear yours isn’t working so good, and you made some promises you can't keep to get up here quicker.”

“Bloody angel can’t keep his mouth shut, can he?” he grumbled.

“Come on, you know as well as I do how easy he is to manipulate.”

Crowley made a gesture of deferment.

She sighed. “Look. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not a kid anymore. I did a lot of thinking while you were gone, and I want to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. To any of us. Aziraphale’s had a turn, you’ve had a turn, and if it ever gets to be my turn I won’t come back so easily.”

The silence hung between them for a moment as Crowley processed that. He took a sharp breath through his teeth. “Melanie, please don’t talk like that. I promise I’ll never—“

She put up a hand. “Don’t. I don’t want you making promises one stroke of shitty luck could make impossible for you to keep. And I’m not disappointed in you as a parent or anything stupid like that. You were trying to help me out, and you got taken out of commission because I decided to be petty. I don’t want anything between us to be weird. Just, you know, from now on we have to be practical.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Define ‘practical.’”

“Aziraphale needs to do your job,” she said simply, “and someone needs to help him do his. So I’ll be filling in on the angel stuff until you’re better.”

“Melanie,” he sighed. “This isn’t your problem. Aziraphale and I can handle it.”

“How, Papa? What are you going to do while you're on the mend that I couldn't do ten times faster? And why should Aziraphale have to risk doing it all on his own? It’s better for everyone if I help.”

“Not for you,” he pointed out. “You’re good at thwarting and all that, I’ll grant you, but it’s never really been the best thing for you, has it? You’re human. Doing what Heaven thinks is good is a waste of your time and perspective, and you’ve already wasted so much of your youth on that.”

“It’s not a waste to protect my family,” she said seriously. “If I can help Aziraphale help you, I’ll do it.”

Crowley sat up straighter, crossing his legs under himself. “And you’re okay with Aziraphale doing my job?”

Melanie shrugged. “Better you or him than someone else from Hell, right?”

"I suppose," he said. Then he stopped, and he realized who'd just said it to him and who she sounded like. "Actually, no. No, come off it, you don't believe that."

She glared at him. "Stop looking at me like that. I don't believe it's how it should be, but right now it's the best thing we have. Unless you think you can make Hell take pity on you twice."

Crowley tried to think of a quip, because he'd always known this was inevitable and it really wasn't something to dwell on, but he found himself as at a loss for words of comfort as he was when he'd explained to her what, exactly, a demon was. "Just don't let yourself get cynical. There's enough of that in this family already." He smiled. "If you ended up as big a sad sack as me, it'd be insufferable."

A sliver of a smile cracked through Melanie's cloudy visage. "You're not that bad," she said. "Now, come on. This mud pit of an island doesn't get any sun, but getting out might do you some good. We can find a good spot and people watch."

"Sure," said Crowley absently, his mind already whirring with possible schemes to get himself back to work and Melanie out of the thwarting business for good. "I'd like that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I'm on a roll in the month of March? Here's hoping this lasts, no promises this is going to be the normal update schedule from now on! Hope you enjoyed!


	9. Chapter 9

There was a woman crouched between two storefronts at Leadenhall Market, a collection of damp, stinking rags pulled uselessly around her as her little dog nestled closer to the warmth of her body. Her eyes darted from side to side, on the lookout for any guard who might drag her away from the jingling purses of merchants and shoppers, or from the dry shelter from the rain she was currently enjoying underneath the market's arcade roof.

One purse jingled more loudly than the others as it dropped suddenly—indeed, miraculously—to the ground in front of her from the belt of a gentleman who’d just ignored her pleas for alms. She jumped at the shock of it. Then, in almost the same motion, her hand darted out and she snatched it up from the ground before anyone could see.

Two figures watched from across the arcade. One appeared to be a man, tall, plump, and richly dressed. The other was small and slight, wearing a simple tunic and hose, a wide-brimmed hat concealing the top half of her pointed face.

“Okay,” said the smaller figure in a thick French accent, “so you tempt her to steal. Congratulations, you do Papa’s job. Is this a test before you teach me?”

The larger figure took a deep, calming breath in. “I wasn’t finished,” he replied, the ends of his words clipped with irritation. “Pay attention.”

The woman glanced guiltily in the direction the purse had fallen from. Then she frowned, sighed, sat up straight, and held the purse aloft. “Milord!” she called after a gentleman decked head to toe in a deep, bright blue.

He turned around, felt the empty space at his belt, and ran to her.

“Now,” Aziraphale whispered, “this is the true test. She was presented with an opportunity to sin and rejected it, and now he’s being presented with a second opportunity to be virtuous.”

The man took the purse and thanked the woman profusely. Melanie and Aziraphale both held their breaths as the man hesitated, and both sighed with frustration as he took his purse and walked away without giving her a penny.

Melanie touched a hand to the purse on her own belt and stepped forward.

Aziraphale grabbed her shoulder. “Not so fast.”

“I just want to give her money,” she protested. “She do the right thing, she deserve something good, yes?”

“That’s an admirable impulse, my dear, but it isn’t the proper role for you in this scenario. Our job isn’t to do good, it’s to encourage goodness in humans for the betterment and ultimate salvation of their souls.”

Melanie tilted her hat back and stared up at him with an arched eyebrow. “So you… How do you say, ‘externaliser’?”

“In what context?” asked Aziraphale with a tired air that indicated he already knew what was coming.

“Tu externalises ton travail à des humains, n’est-ce pas?” she asked, her voice remaining deadpan.

He sighed, glowering down at her. “That would be ‘outsourcing.’”

She cackled. “Outsourcing! Oh, this is good. I'm learning so much of Heaven's standards”

“Don't be flippant," he scolded. "If we were to give her the money she deserves, it would deprive a human the opportunity to demonstrate that virtue. I'm an angel, my place in Heaven is secure. It does no one any long term good if I perform an act of kindness instead of encouraging someone else to do it."

Melanie frowned thoughtfully. "But won't she remember this and not want to do good again?"

"We could try to push someone else to help her, but look around you." He gestured out to the crowded marketplace. "Every soul here is just as vulnerable to damnation as she is, if not more. If we stop to focus on her, we could miss other, better opportunities to save somebody else."

"If we just made her harder to save, we should help her," said Melanie, her voice rising.

"My dear, that gentleman is still far harder to save than she is. She did the good deed, he didn't. Now we can move on knowing that at the very least she's earned a few points in favor of her salvation."

She took a deep breath and seemed to struggle to keep her tone calm. "So she will starve because she was good. That's terrible."

"No," said Aziraphale, "it's ineffable. It may sound cold, my dear, but the job isn’t to stop her from starving. It’s to ensure that, if and when she does starve to death, her soul goes to a better place.”

“It doesn't sound cold, it _is_ cold,” she snapped.

“Perhaps it is, Melanie, but it's what I need you to do for me while your father’s ill. Once he recovers, the duty will fall back to me and you can give out all the money you like.” He smiled. “After all, you’ve a soul of your own to care for. This whole endeavor may well be beneficial for you. Educational.”

Melanie stared ahead at the market, her face resolute. “I don't do this for my soul," she said. "I do it for Papa."

That was what Aziraphale's lessons with Melanie always came to. She didn't take well to Heaven's approved tactics at first, but in the weeks since Crowley's return his condition had worsened. They both suspected it was being back in a corporeal body that had done it. It took energy to keep a heart pumping and lungs breathing, and the cold of English autumn had only sapped that energy even further. He'd been awake—well, he'd insisted on being woken up for the girl's sake, at any rate—but he'd hardly left his bed since his first few days back. If Melanie or Aziraphale didn't come in and wake him up, all he did was sleep. Melanie tried not to let it show, but it was clear she was taking it hard. Where before she'd been happy to debate the nuances of Aziraphale's job for hours with him, now she could only muster up enough anger for a few barbs before accepting that this was the way it had to be.

But it was necessary, they both agreed. Hell let Crowley do whatever he liked so long as he got results, but Heaven cared a bit more about the methods behind their results. After all, Heaven served the Great Plan. One had to conduct oneself according to that Plan, even if parts of it were incomprehensible or felt wrong. And, well, the last thing any of the three of them needed was someone from Heaven investigating Aziraphale’s apparent sloppiness and discovering a bedridden demon, his fugitive Nephil daughter, and the angel charged with her neutralization living under one roof. It was sad, seeing how much of Melanie's fight had left her, but it was ultimately for the greater good that she learn to help him with his work the proper way. Or at the very least the greater well-being of their odd little family unit.

They went home for dinner. Lately, at Melanie’s insistence, ‘dinner’ meant bringing food to Crowley’s room where Aziraphale and Crowley sat in the two plush chairs before the fire, and Melanie sat on the foot of the bed and ate her meal off of the plate she kept balanced in her lap.

Aziraphale couldn’t help turning his nose up a bit at the loose sense of propriety Crowley had allowed the girl to grow up with, but it did feel kinder than dragging the poor demon downstairs to socialize. Even if Aziraphale hadn't been able to feel how little of Crowley there was occupying that body of his, it didn't take an angel to see that he needed all the sleep he was getting. He'd taken on a sallow, sunken appearance as he'd gotten worse, and his yellow gaze seemed to drift in and out of focus as he struggled to stay present. He always seemed happy to take on that struggle for Melanie's sake, though, and she tended to fall back on more familiar languages around him so they could both relax.

That night, Melanie brought up the woman in the market to Crowley despite Aziraphale’s protest. “So, what do you think?” she asked. “Should we have helped her out?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow, pulling the robe he was wearing tighter around himself. “Yes. With the gentleman's purse again, in fact. Call it divine punishment."

"And that, Melanie, is the difference between Heaven and Hell," said Aziraphale haughtily. "Heaven attempts to put everyone on the path to goodness, no matter who they are. Hell exists as an entity of vengeance and spite."

Something in Crowley's expression changed. His eyebrows lifted, and his eyes hardened as he looked over Aziraphale's face. He sniffed. "No matter who they are, eh?" He tapped his chin in mock contemplation. "Remind me what it was you were ordered to do when Melanie's nursemaid kindly made a plea to Heaven on behalf of her immortal soul."

Melanie lowered the chicken leg she was eating from her mouth and tilted her head at her father. "I mean he didn't, though," she said slowly.

Aziraphale smiled, but he spoke through his teeth and kept his eyes on Crowley. "No, my dear, I didn't. We were all very fortunate that you happened to be born to a father who was willing to take you in and teach you how to harness your abilities so that you didn't grow up to be a danger to humanity."

"Or to Heaven's power," Crowley added pleasantly. "Can't forget our priorities, here. It's not as though Heaven couldn't have sent a few angels down to show those kids the ropes." He gave him an acid smile. "But that wasn't the route Heaven took, was it?"

“Well, often we weren’t able to find Nephilim before they were grown and causing trouble, were we? And so many of them had children of their own we’d _also_ have to track down.”

Crowley sat up against the back of the chair and crossed his arms. “Maybe that is true,” he said. “Hardly justifies drowning the whole world just to wipe them out, though, does it? I’m just saying, even you’ve had to disobey orders a fair few times to do the right thing. Melanie’s living proof of that. If she goes against protocol to help feed someone who lives in this unequal world ineffability has allowed, is that so wrong? Maybe your money-hoarding gentleman might even learn a lesson from it.”

“And maybe your daughter needs to learn ways to do good that aren’t just mirroring Hell’s tactics and putting a more positive spin on them,” Aziraphale snapped. “She’s well-versed enough in doing things your way, perhaps now it’s time you let her try mine.”

Melanie put her food down. “Hey, uh, are you guys good? Should I go?”

“No,” said Crowley quickly. He slumped and threw his head back, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths. "Sorry. I'm just a bit tired, that's all, and, well, we _are_ adversaries, ultimately.”

“Okay,” she said dubiously. “I’m fine, for the record. I can tell Aziraphale off if I need to.”

He snapped his eyes open and met her gaze, embarrassed. “I know. I’m sorry, kiddo.”

“It’s okay.” She stared at her plate as silence overtook the room, and then she looked up with a small smile fixed on her face, as though the previous exchange had never happened. "So, Papa, there was the funniest man hawking fish in the market..."

* * *

Melanie went to bed, and Aziraphale retired to the library to try and catch up on his double load of work. He stared at his notes for Crowley's half of the load and found that he couldn't think too far into what sorts of evil he might spread without remembering the smug look on the demon in question's face. He set that work aside, hoping that doing some good might get him in the mood to be productive, but again all he could think about was the genuine aggression Crowley had brought to their argument.

Snarking about Heaven was one thing, but bringing the Flood up in front of Melanie was quite another. That wasn't snark, it was personal. Sighing, Aziraphale put down his quill and stormed up the stairs back to Crowley's room. He knocked, waited for the customary grunt that indicated Crowley was awake, and burst through the door.

Crowley glanced at the window and, seeing no sunlight creeping in from around the curtains, glared at Aziraphale. "What?" he asked sharply.

" _What_ was that tonight?" Aziraphale demanded

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, his face lit by the fire burning in the hearth. "Angel, I've been sleeping and I'll remind you that I am _quite_ ill. Maybe give me a bit of context and I can shed some light for you."

Aziraphale stepped forward and shut the door quietly behind him. "You trying to undermine me in front of Melanie."

"Ah," said Crowley. "I wouldn't quite call it undermining, merely offering her another perspective."

"She knows your perspective. You're her father."

He raised an eyebrow. "Clearly she doesn't, or she'd never have offered to do your job in the first place."

Aziraphale sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. "What's this really about? Did Hell contact you?"

"What?" asked Crowley, looking sincerely confused. "No. Hell aren't expecting a damn thing from me. They saw me in a worse state than either of you did."

"Did something happen down there?"

"No," he repeated. "What, you think Hell put me up to educating my daughter about the pitfalls of working for Heaven?"

He took a deep breath and nodded sympathetically. "I see. I suppose I should have expected this. You did your best to raise her good, and even then it only manifested as a benevolent parody of you. Now that there's true heavenly influence in her life, she's starting to reflect something that isn't your nature—"

"Oh, piss off, this isn't about nature. The Melanie I know wouldn't even consider that tripe you were telling her about that woman's just reward in the afterlife. This is bad for her, angel. You see it, too, don't you?"

"She's doing it for you. We both are."

He wrapped his arms around his chest, looking too worn out to be properly indignant. "Well, nobody asked me. And if either of you had, I would have told you no. I don't want her working for Heaven, Aziraphale."

"You let her thwart you!" he protested. "She said herself back in Venice that she thought all she could do was pose as a demon and try to push them to good that way. I understand it might all feel foreign to you—"

"None of it feels foreign to me, Aziraphale," he hissed. "I know your side perfectly well. Heaven threw me out, and it tried to kill her."

"So you'd deny it to her?"

"I'm not denying her anything! I'm trying to protect her from you and your pigheaded devotion to a Plan even you don't believe in half the time."

Aziraphale stood. "Don't tell me what I believe."

Crowley laughed. It wasn't cruel, exactly, but it felt it. "Angel, come off it, it's _me_ you're talking to. I know you better than anyone, and I know you've had doubts since at least Eden. Maybe you don't let yourself say it or think it, but I remember what happened with your sword. I remember what happened twelve years ago right here in London. You've got the same doubts Melanie has. That I have."

Aziraphale crossed his arms. "Oh, is that what this is about? You're trying to tempt me into falling?"

His face fell. "What? Aziraphale, no, of course not." He sighed. "Look, sit down."

He did.

Crowley reached back and propped the pillows against the headboard so he could sit more easily. "We can't keep doing this. Not while Melanie's under the same roof as either one of us, at any rate. I get that you need me to be a demon so you can feel more like an angel, but the last thing Melanie needs is either one of those things. She needs a father. And, er. Well, whatever you've been to her up to now."

"Still an angel, I should hope," he scoffed. "And whatever you are to Melanie, you're a demon first."

That same hard look came over Crowley's face. "Stop that. You want to talk about undermining? How many times have you tried to convince her that's true?"

Aziraphale felt his face grow hot. "I—"

Crowley gave him a mirthless smile. "Thought so. I'm happy to be a demon for you, Aziraphale, I know that's what you need from me, but Melanie's just a kid. She's still learning about the world, and you don't get to poison her with all the lies you tell yourself because you're afraid you'll wind up like me."

"And what are you doing?" he sputtered. "From the sound of it, you want _her_ to be like you."

"No. No, not at all. That's exactly what I'm trying to stop," he said, his tone becoming desperate. "Don't you get it? She's human. She's allowed to be herself in a way neither of us has ever been, and you're trying to put her into the same box you've been forced into all your life. And if she's anything like me, angel, trying to fit into that box is going to ruin her."

Aziraphale looked at those pleading eyes, his pupils wide in the dim light, and he found himself remembering a similar look he'd gotten in a French convent not so long ago. "What would you have me do?"

"I don't know," said Crowley. "I can take on some of the work, make the plans for my side of things."

"You can hardly stay awake for more than a few hours a day, my dear. That's not going to be much help."

"I'll manage if it keeps Melanie out of this."

"My dear boy," Aziraphale sighed, "it's not worth the risk. You might exhaust yourself making a tiny dent in my workload, or worse kill yourself again trying, or, Heav—Hel—fortune forbid, someone from either of our sides comes looking again. Perhaps serving Heaven isn't the best thing for Melanie's emotional well-being, but I'm afraid it's the best thing for her continued existence on Earth. So, if you don't mind, we've worked quite hard to build up a rapport and I'd prefer you not be the thing to come between us. Particularly because we only started trying to get along in the first place for your sake."

"For my sake?" he repeated.

"Yes, of course," said Aziraphale, casting his eyes skyward. "That was the first thing we found in common. That we both..." He trailed off. "Well. We each have a role to play in your life, don't we? And the girl cares for you."

Crowley looked down, a series of incomprehensible emotions flitting across his face. Then he looked up at Aziraphale and said, "Angel, if you're going to be dragging Melanie into all your crap with Heaven, I think it's probably time we talked about..." He gestured awkwardly between the two of them.

The pounding of Aziraphale's heart filled his ears, and he felt an ache rise up in his throat. "The Arrangement?" he tried in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the inevitable.

A loud sigh escaped Crowley. He buried his face in his hand, covering his eyes. "No, you stupid bastard," he groaned. He raised his head, pulling his hand down the length of his face and then dropping it into his lap. "Us. You and me. That _thing_ we never talk about."

"I- You- I don't know what you mean," said Aziraphale primly.

"Yes you do!" Crowley's voice was strangled with the effort not to actually shout at Aziraphale. "I don't want to talk about it, either, but it's affecting the way you talk about me to my kid!" He sat up suddenly, probably to emphasize the next point he wanted to make, but then he swayed and began to fall backwards. Had Aziraphale not caught him, he'd have hit his head rather hard.

"Careful," said Aziraphale, setting him back against his pillows. He took a deep breath and silently cursed both members of the Crowley family for sharing a knack for this sort of insight. "Perhaps I am a bit harsh on you for my own benefit," he said hesitantly, "but I don't—"

Crowley glowered impatiently at him.

"Fine. Perhaps I do. How long have you suspected?"

He snorted. "I've _known_ for a good three thousand years. It's hard to remember, but I think I suspected it for a long time before that."

A thousand drunken nights flashed before Aziraphale's eyes, Crowley's golden eyes peering temptingly out from over dark glasses and veils or under wide brims. He glared down at him. "That explains quite a bit about your conduct before the Arrangement."

"Wow," said Crowley with a snort. "That's got to be some deep denial that you're just realizing that now."

Aziraphale pursed his lips, considering whether he wanted the answer to his next question. "And... in the name of honesty... Where do you stand on the matter?"

He took a deep breath and affected a look so achingly casual, Aziraphale's face muscles smarted sympathetically. "About where you do. Not that I think we should, you know, do anything about it. I don't want you to fall."

"Ah," said Aziraphale. "Sweet of you."

"It's not sweet," Crowley growled. "It's... _practical_." He said the last word bitterly. "And that's the point of me bringing this up, angel. It's our job to be practical, not Melanie's. If you're going to be dragging her deeper into the part of existence you and I occupy, I need you to be able to be honest with yourself so you don't let her absorb all the same noxious ideas that have kept us from acting on this great, big, obvious thing we've always had. You've got to be able to recognize when things have gone too far and pull her back. Do you understand?"

Aziraphale nodded. "I do."

"Good," he said stiffly. "Thank you."

"I'll let you go back to sleep, then, shall I?" He didn't move from where he was sitting.

"Yeah," said Crowley, sitting up straighter. "I should get more rest, I've been awake more than enough today."

"Here, here."

"Yes. Right, then."

They sat together on the bed in silence, staring at each other.

Then, all at once, the distance between them closed. It was difficult to say who initiated first; it was entirely possible they’d moved at the same time. Whoever was to blame, the end result was that Crowley had fallen dizzily into Aziraphale’s waiting arms, and both of them were suddenly kissing with the pent up passion and frustration and _love_ of five thousand years. It wasn’t a dignified kiss. Teeth clashed and bit into tongues, lips missed their optimal mark, Crowley really was struggling to stay upright and Aziraphale was struggling to keep hold of his near-dead weight and kiss him at the same time. Still, it was something each of them had dreamed of doing longer than any civilization had ever lasted. That the dream was manifesting as imperfect reality only made it all the more wondrous; it was proof that it wasn't a dream anymore.

Crowley was rather heavy, though, so Aziraphale laid him on his back, leaning over him and trailing kisses down his jawline and neck to his collarbone.

“Angel,” Crowley panted, placing a hand under Aziraphale’s chin and pulling his head up. “We should stop.”

Aziraphale held his gaze intently. “Do you want to stop?”

He licked his lips. “No.”

Aziraphale kissed his mouth again, more gracefully this time, and from that point on neither of them hesitated.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) Thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we have NOT slept well and we have NOT proofread this but I took way too many drafts for a simple set-up in betweeny chapter so here you go. Hopefully now that the crazy part of May is over I can just chill and write more. Love you all.

Melanie sat on a chair in the corner of Aziraphale's dusty study, perched with one foot up on the seat and one hanging down on the ground. She was hugging her knee to her chest with one arm, her other elbow resting on it as she propped her chin up. Her eyebrows perked up like a fox’s ears on alert and her yellow eyes fixed on Aziraphale’s work.

“So this opens up a door to Heaven?”

“A line of communication,” Aziraphale corrected her. “There isn’t an earthly way to go there or Hell.”

“Well there is,” said Melanie with a wicked grin. "It just goes one way.”

Aziraphale straightened his back and drew another line on the floor, determined for once not to give in to provocation. “That’s a morbid way of putting it, but I suppose you’re right,” he said evenly.

She laughed, and then she got up and crouched next to Aziraphale to get a better look. “If it’s not a door, is it a window?”

“Better.” He began to fill the symbols in. “There is a spark of divinity in everything on Earth, and what this circle does is concentrate that divinity into something that can reach the circle’s twin in Heaven.”

“Like… I think I know the word. Distortion of light, maybe?" Melanie suggested.

“Yes, precisely. Think of the circle as a metaphysical magnifying glass.”

She frowned. “Then what is the rest of magic, do you think? Papa doesn’t have divinity, and I get my magic from him.”

Aziraphale paused in his work, furrowing his brow. “Oh, I’m dreadful at explaining this.” He switched to French, not wanting to make things harder on Melanie than they had to be. “Has Crowley ever gone on to you about prisms?”

“They refract waves of light, which I’m not supposed to talk about because humans haven’t figured out about the waves yet,” Melanie recited.

Aziraphale stared at her. “Yes. I think. Crowley really does understand this all better than I do, he was in one of the lower spheres and actually did the work of making the world. It was white light that contained all the other forms of light, wasn’t it? Rainbows come from white light being refracted through water vapor.”

“That’s what he told me.” She sat back on her bottom, criss-crossing her legs underneath her. "At least as far as humans go what we see is light being reflected back at our eyes, and what colors things reflect depends on what colors they absorb. So black things absorb every color and white things reflect every color.”

“Perfect, just as I thought. So think of divinity as white light, and the act of creation as a prism. Everything on Earth absorbs and reflects different aspects of divinity filtered through that prism, but none of it reflects all aspects. Angels, on the other hand, do.”

Melanie frowned. “But then why would demons have power if they’re cut off from divinity?”

Aziraphale crossed his arms and pursed his lips. “Admittedly this is an imperfect metaphor. Demons don’t absorb light the way the color black does; it’s more that they reflect darkness as a force in its own right. They were created to reflect the same amount of light as angels, but in the absence of that light they end up reflecting a sort of shadow of Creation. It often functions in the same way as divine light, but because it’s defined by absence it doesn’t hold up well in the presence of, well, Presence.” He paused. “What was the question again?”

“How can I do magic?”

“Ah, yes. So, as I said, angels were built to reflect that divine light as brightly as possible and demons don’t lose that function, even if they’ve lost access to the light itself. Whatever your father currently is, it seems you retain some of that reflective ability. However, because you’re half human, the way your power manifests is neither divine nor infernal. You simply reflect whatever color humans are a lot more brightly than mere humans can.”

Melanie nodded slowly. “Think we have some of that absence too? With original sin and all that?”

“I don’t know. If you do, it works differently. After all, you can’t be hurt by holiness the way your fath—“ He stopped, eyes going wide. “Oh, Melanie, my dear, I’m sorry.”

She snorted and pat his arm. “You pick the weirdest damn times to try to be sensitive. We’re talking practical magical theory, we have this weird mixed household, I’m not going to turn into a puddle of goo if you bring up what holy energy does to demons in passing. Thank you for the lesson. That was actually pretty cool.”

Aziraphale gave her a small smile. “You’re very welcome.”

He drew a few more symbols, placed his candles around the circle, lit the incense—(“One should always take the time to add a little interest, my dear”)—and stood back. “Remember, be absolutely quiet. And don’t go near the circle while it’s active; I don’t know what it would do to you but it likely wouldn’t be good.”

Melanie went behind the desk and sat down in Aziraphale’s chair. “Okay, I’m ready,” she whispered.

He placed the candles, said the Words, and the circle began to glow.

“Aziraphale,” said a well-educated voice.

“Yes, hullo,” said Aziraphale cheerfully. “I’m here to give you an update on my progress with the Starford House mission, as we previously discussed.”

“And?”

“Obviously there have been... some signs of neglect that have popped up in my absence. Lord Starford’s daughter Beatrice has shown some reluctance to marry the Earl of Worthwood. I’ve come up with a plan to try and correct this.”

He'd been working closely with the Baron of Lakewood to unite the Starford and Worthwood lines before Melanie came into his life and swiftly (indirectly) ended it. It was an important strategic choice; both houses were well-connected in the North and friends with larger houses that tended to be rivals. If he could unite them, he could continue to influence the actions of those families and the larger houses through the Lakewood line and any children that resulted from the Starford-Worthwood line to come. In his absence, plague had swept through the North, Beatrice Starford had been the only child who survived to marrying age, and Lord Lakewood had retreated to his own castle to avoid the disease.

“You _will_ correct this, Aziraphale,” said the voice. “What is your plan?”

“I have a new agent I’ve recruited,” he said, meeting Melanie’s eyes with what he thought was a rather clever-looking wink.

Melanie cast her eyes skyward and gave him a reluctant thumbs up.

“She is around Lady Starford’s age, and she will befriend the girl and convince her that the marriage is her duty to her family, her king, and to God. I shall be monitoring the situation, of course, in case things go awry.”

“Good,” said the voice. “And we trust you’ll keep away from distractions this time around. Or at least keep your merriment at safe levels for your corporation.”

Aziraphale’s smile soured. “Of course,” he agreed through his teeth.

“Very good. We look forward to your report, Aziraphale.” And then, without much fanfare, the light went out.

Melanie raised an eyebrow. “‘Merriment?’”

“You couldn’t leave that one be, could you?” he sighed. “Your father was kind enough to get me drunk before he killed me your first time in London.”

She laughed. “This family is ridiculous.”

Aziraphale froze. “‘Family’?”

And them, for the first time since Aziraphale had known her, Melanie looked away sheepishly. “Was that weird? Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s…” He didn’t know what it was. “It’s a lovely sentiment,” he finished with false brightness.

Melanie was something of an invasive species within the carefully constructed ecosystem that allowed Aziraphale to manage his affections. For the vast majority of his life, there had been two categories of people. There was Crowley, the enemy he loved and kept at arm's length; and then there was the rest of Earth's sentient population, all of whom he could love with abandon but who always left him too soon.

The girl didn't fit into either category. He supposed she as something of an enemy, but a Nephil whose only crime was existing was a very different beast from a demon who was officially working against him at every turn. She also wasn't going to grow old and die like everyone else Aziraphale had allowed himself to love. Over the years Aziraphale had developed a routine with friendships: the moment he felt himself growing close to a human, he started calculating when he was going to exit their life so he didn't have to witness their end. He'd started doing the same thing with Melanie as they toured France together, and he'd come to the slow realization that there was no end coming for her. As he watched her study and grow under him, he realized he was shaping someone who would be in his life for as long as Crowley would.

But, then, that was the problem: she was Crowley's daughter. He and Crowley had decided immediately after all this began that it would end the moment Crowley was better, but he couldn't ask Melanie to do the same thing. For six months he'd been all she had, and for the first five weeks or so after that things were only different for the hour or two a day Crowley was awake. Even now, Crowley was only capable of being out of bed a few hours at a time. She wouldn't need him like this forever, but he'd established that he was someone she could rely in if she did need him. At least when he did push Crowley away it would be something Crowley had consented to; Melanie wouldn't be nearly as understanding.

He explained this last thing to Crowley that night. "And of course there's the fact that the closer I am to her, Crowley, the closer I have to be to you."

“Asssssziraphale,” he said with strained patience, staring at him with one eyebrow arched from across the pillows, “you’re _in my ssssodding bed._ We’re _closssssse._ We’ve gone beyond that _point._ ”

“This really is the last time,” Aziraphale protested, pulling the blankets tighter over himself.

Crowley rolled his eyes. “That’s what you said last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. And—“

“Could we please focus on the issue at hand? Your daughter is getting attached to the three of us as a single unit, and I don’t want her getting hurt when this ends. Because it _will_ end, Crowley,” he reminded him.

“You don’t have to tell me,” said Crowley. “You think I’m happy about her going up to Yorkshire to convince that poor girl to marry some rich old bastard she’ll probably hate? The sooner I can get her away from all this, the better.”

“Oh, let her have that mission. She’s excited.”

“She won’t be when she realizes what she’s doing. We talked about this, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale sighed. “That’s how power is secured in this society, Crowley. Beatrice Starford won’t be the only young girl married off to expand her family’s influence.”

“And how old is she? Melanie’s age? That could have been Melanie’s life, you know, if her mum had kept her secret from me and she looked more like her.”

“Then perhaps we can compromise. I need you to let her know you won't be staying once you're well, and you can bring all this up to her while you do that and let her come to a decision herself.”

Crowley sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Fine,” he said. “But you've got to promise to look out for her, Aziraphale. Give her outs and let her know your backup plans. If anything goes wrong, I want her to be able to walk away from it. She’s got enough regrets already, and she’ll have to live with hers for as long as we have ours.”

Aziraphale looked him over, his hair mussed from sex, his yellow eyes hard in a face that grew less gaunt every day, signaling the ever-approaching end of their affair. “Yes, there’s quite enough regret going around this family as it is.”

There was a shifting sound of linen sheets as Crowley slowly turned his head toward Aziraphale again, both brows held aloft, his mouth twisting as he held in a laugh. “So you’re attached to us as a single unit, are you?” The dam broke and he descended into a fit of giggles

“A slip of the tongue!” Aziraphale protested, his face growing hot. And then, to his surprise, he began to laugh as well. “You— You incorrigible thing!” he choked out between chuckles.

Crowley took a steadying breath and gave Aziraphale a lazy smile. “I’m sure Mel’s figured us out by now, but as long as we’re pretending it’s a secret affair let’s make it a fun one, eh?” He rolled over and kissed him softly. “Save the regrets for later.”

Aziraphale matched his smile with a sad one. He sat up, kissed Crowley’s temple, and threw off the blankets. “I should get going on contingency plans so everything doesn’t fall apart if Melanie backs out. You should sleep, my dear, you’ll want to be rested when you talk to her tomorrow.”

“Right,” said Crowley, smile fading.

He didn’t ask Aziraphale to stay the night, and Aziraphale didn’t offer. It was a small regret, Aziraphale thought, not one of the ones he’d carry forever. He regretted it all the same.

* * *

Crowley managed to be up by noon, which was a rare feat for him these days. He dressed—slowly, like a human, and he had to give it several tries before he got the ties on his hose right—and then he hung his cloak up by the fire and went downstairs to where Melanie and Aziraphale were hard at work in the library.

He knocked on the door frame and cleared his throat.

Melanie and Aziraphale looked up from their work, eyes wide with surprise.

"Going out?" asked Aziraphale.

"Just fancied a quick walk, I'm sick of being indoors," said Crowley smoothly. He looked to his daughter. "Mel, I can't do my normal coat trick. Mind coming along to keep me warm?"

Melanie gave him a skeptical look, then glanced at Aziraphale to confirm that he was trying to subtly catch Crowley's eye and confirm through facial expressions that this was the _special_ talk with Melanie they'd obviously discussed without her knowing. Crowley sighed, and Melanie smirked, and they were on their way.

It was a damp, gloomy November day, but the rain had stopped that morning and the clouds were thinning enough that the clouds had lightened to a bright silver. From time to time a pocket of blue popped up, bringing the occasional burst of little sunlight.

"You warm enough?" asked Melanie, her eyebrows furrowed with concentration as they made their way from Aziraphale's house to the river.

The Thames was nice in this part of London. Westminster wasn't as pastoral as proper countryside in those days, but there was space between the houses. The shit didn't pile up as much as it did in the City of London proper, and the Thames didn't stink with filth and disease and chemical pollution from tanners and blacksmiths and cloth-makers. It was still diseased, of course, but it was clear and slate-grey under the sky, and when the sun hit it, it glistened.

"Yeah," said Crowley, his hands plunged deep into his pockets. "Not too far, alright? I've got to get back, remember."

Melanie nodded and guided him to a nice, flat boulder on a grassy patch of riverbank. "Here," she said. "This is my favorite spot."

"It's lovely," said Crowley. He sat down and leaned back, taking in the river. “So. You’re going up north for a bit. Very exciting.”

“It is,” Melanie agreed, sitting down next to him. “Do you think I’ll get to see some snow?”

“Dunno why you want to,” Crowley muttered. “But you like traveling?”

“I really do. I mean, it won’t be as fun as France was with Aziraphale, but it’s an adventure. And I’ll get to talk to someone my own age for once.”

Crowley hummed thoughtfully. “You should savor that. You’ve finished growing, and you won’t be aging for much longer, either.”

She laughed and tilted her hat up to look at him. “Oh is _that_ why we’re on a walk? To talk about immortality?”

“Hat down, kid, there are other people out today," he scolded.

"You're paranoid," she said with a roll of her yellow eyes. "Nobody's looking that closely."

"Fine," Crowley sighed. "Don't listen to me. Your funeral."

She snorted and dropped the hat. "I thought we were talking about immortality."

"Sort of. About growing up in general, I think. What comes next for you. _You’re_ certainly not being married off like that girl up north. Have you ever thought about what you’d like to do?”

Melanie shrugged, and her head tilted down as though she was looking for something. “Not since I was little. I’ve kind of had a job for a while, haven’t I?”

“Thwarting me?”

“Yeah. And now helping Aziraphale. I guess that’s what I’m good at.”

Crowley sighed. “Melanie. Before the Grandinetti Ball, we talked about being sick of fighting each other. You know I’ll have to go back to work once I’m well again, right?”

She reached down and fished up a small, flat stone. “I think that’s out of my system. God knows I don’t want you getting dragged to Hell again.”

“And I appreciate that, but you also weren’t wrong to want to fight it.”

She tossed it, sending it bouncing across the river: one, two, three, four, five times before it sank. “Why? I mean, it’s just how things are, right? I can’t change how Heaven and Hell work. I don’t even officially exist to either of them.”

“You can’t change it,” he admitted, “and neither can Aziraphale or I from the inside, but is it really better to work alongside it like this when you could be doing something else?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know, I don’t _like_ how Heaven does things, but they decide who goes where when they die. And people spend a lot longer dead than they do alive. If I want to do as much good as possible, isn’t that what I should be focused on?”

Crowley felt something bubbling up from the pit of his stomach. “No!” he cried out more loudly than he'd intended. “You’re seventeen years old!" He saw her start to argue and put up a hand. “Sorry. Look, I’m glad you care so much about other people. I'm honestly proud that's how you see the world, but, Melanie, you’ve got a dad. And you’ve got Aziraphale, who will absolutely take over whatever you need him to for your peace of mind if you just say the word. There are so many ways to do good outside of helping Heaven or thwarting Hell, and _those_ are what you should be focusing on. You belong to this world, not to either of the next ones. I don’t want you wasting your youth on other people’s deaths when there’s plenty of life all around you. Leave Heaven and Hell to angels and demons. You're human, you've got Earth all to yourself.”

“But I’m not just human. I'm half a demon, too, or... half a neutral angel thing, I guess, I don't know. I didn’t grow up with a human family, Papa, I grew up with you and with Aziraphale in and out of my life.” She started looking for another stone.

“What about Luciano? You’ve probably spent almost as much time with him as you have with me, and far more than you have with Aziraphale.”

“And then he got possessed,” she said simply, picking up another stone and tossing it. A bit of sun shone down on the river, and the water it displaced glittered in the light. “It’s not just you I feel responsible for. Luciano got hurt because he was my fr—“

“—because you’re my daughter. Because I drank a century away instead of working had a kid who was born into dangers I brought down on both of us. You’re not why Hell sent that scout after me, and you’re not why that scout went for your friend. Those were things I should have been able to protect you from, and I failed.”

Melanie looked down. “That night I snuck into the house, I should have told you what was going on. I should have—“

“That’s enough. What good is ‘should have’ going to do either of us, eh? We both made our mistakes, however many and however grave, and now we’ve got new problems to solve.” He gave her a significant look.

She groaned. “Okay, shoot. What do you think our new problems are?”

“I think you’re throwing your youth away on things that aren’t your problem.”

“Okay. I think you’re sick and can’t work and I don't want Hell coming up here or Heaven coming down here.”

He put up a finger. “You're lumping several issues into one. How I got sick is in the past; the only thing to be done for it is letting me rest, which you and Aziraphale are taking care of. And I’m glad you’ve stepped up, but this can’t be your whole life, Melanie. If you stick around us after I get well, you’re going to keep getting pulled in and I don’t want that for you when you’re the only one out of the three of us who has an out.”

Melanie tilted her hat up and narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m leaving England,” said Crowley. “When I’m better, I mean. You can come with me if you really want, or stay with Aziraphale if he agrees to it, but I’m not going to be the one exposing you to Heaven any longer than I have to.”

“But…” She paused, calculating her next words and then articulating them carefully. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I was under the impression that you and Aziraphale had grown… close.”

“I thought you might be,” Crowley sighed. “That’s another reason I can’t stay.”

Melanie didn’t look upset, exactly—not yet, not while she was still processing it all. As much of a firebrand as she could be, she was smart enough to wait until she had a good grasp of a scenario before she went off. She simply asked, “Is that why you were keeping it secret?”

He shrugged. “Among other reasons. Do you want to... I don't know, talk about it? I know it's weird.”

She shrugged as well. “I’m guessing you have the same reasons he has not to want to keep it up. You’re enemies.”

“Right,” said Crowley. “He’d get in a lot of trouble.”

Melanie pursed her lips. “He’d get in a lot of trouble having me around, too, and so would you, but neither of you seems to have much of a problem with that.”

Crowley stared at her, sputtering. “It’s— Look, it’s complicated, alright? And it’s not the point. You come before he does, and even if we could stay together it would just keep dragging you back into the absolute shitshow that is the War between our sides.”

“Oh,” said Melanie, rolling her eyes, “so it’s my fault the family’s breaking up.”

“We’re not—“ Crowley stopped himself before he could say anything he regretted. He took a moment, took a breath, and started again. “I’m glad you and Aziraphale have gotten so close, I am, whatever happens next he’s my oldest friend and he’s not leaving either of our lives entirely. But he’s worried about all this, too, Mel. I’m not making this decision alone.”

Melanie crossed her arms. “And neither of you thought to ask me? I like living with him, and having you around, and you like being around both of us. I don’t get why that has to end.”

“It’s not that simple,” Crowley snapped. “You’ve existed less than one tenth of one percent of our friendship, you don’t know our history.”

“I know you,” she shot back. “You’re not leaving for either of our sakes; you’re hedging and cutting corners and running away because you don’t want to do the hard work of actually _dealing_ with anything. I don’t want you leaving when I just got you back, and I think if you and Aziraphale just talked, _really_ talked, you’d see that you’re both being stupid.”

Melanie threw a round stone gracelessly into the river and stormed off, leaving Crowley alone and clutching his cloak to keep in the warmth she'd just stopped maintaining. She got a good ten meters away before she stopped, stomped back, and pulled Crowley to a standing position.

“Forgot about the cold,” she grunted, hat pulled firmly over her eyes so he couldn't look into them.

Crowley sighed. “I’ll think it over while you’re up north, alright?”

She tilted her head up and fixed him with a withering stare. “Sure,” she said tiredly. “You totally won't just talk yourself out of that one." Melanie sighed and took his arm. "Come on, let's go home."

 


	11. Chapter 11

Picture this scene: a dusty grey horse galloping through the night, snow swirling around it in the wind. Atop it sit two riders. In the rear is a girl of sixteen, sat with her skirts bunched up and her arms clasped tightly around the waist in front of her, her eyes screwed shut against the biting wind. At the front sat another girl, her stolen men’s clothing too big for her, her teeth grit, slit-pupiled eyes narrowed with apparent determination.

The look of determination mostly came from the constant stream of magic she was tossing behind her as she vanished the horse’s scent and hoof prints. Her internal monologue comprised of several languages at once, specifically the late  medieval versions of those languages, but a particularly adept scholar might translate it roughly as such:

 _Shit, shit, shit, shit, goddamn motherfucking_ shit _, I am so goddamn_ fucked _we are_ all _going to die, fucking_ fuck _._

* * *

That same night, Aziraphale was surprised by the distinct sound of somebody opening the door to his wine cellar. Puzzled, he went to investigate in time to see Crowley coming up the stairs from down below with a bottle of Château Orléans 1322 in hand.

He crossed his arms testily. “My dear boy, you might have asked.”

Crowley held the bottle up. “The kid’s gone, angel, and I’m not as sick as I was. That means you and I can finally sit down, get spectacularly drunk, and settle this whole stupid thing between us once and for all.”

* * *

Things had started out alright. Melanie had shown up to the castle with her eyes covered with opaque cloth, disguised as Lord Lakewood's ward, the blind French bastard of some nobleman too important to name lest scandal break out. Lord Starford hadn't really been one to converse with young girls, or perhaps blind people in particular. He wasn't a terribly nice person, was the point, so it had been easy to get Beatrice alone in her room. She'd trust Melanie, of course, because she seemed harmless and because she had no reason to question why Melanie was covering her eyes. It would be an easy job, she thought.

They talked for a bit, Melanie doing her best to steer the conversation to the girl's betrothal without giving away the fact that she already knew about it, and then she'd surprised her. Melanie had let an off-color joke slip about how the wedding night might go, and instead of being offended Beatrice had laughed. Melanie couldn't see her face at the time, but she'd laughed like someone who hadn't had anything to laugh about in a long time and uncorked a bottle of wine she'd stolen from her father's cellar.

As a conversationalist, Beatrice was as engaging as she was engaged. Between the talk and the drink Melanie had to work hard to walk the fine line between sprinkling enough truth of her life in to keep up with the conversation and giving herself away as a fraud. It turned out the girls had a lot in common, actually. They'd both grown up with absent mothers, Melanie from what she decided to call scandal and Beatrice from plague; they both loved music and poetry; and, well...

They were lying on top of the bed together, slippers long kicked off, Beatrice's voice buzzing pleasantly in Melanie's ear as her head spun in the darkness she'd imposed on herself.

"I don't see why I've got to marry a man, anyhow," Beatrice slurred. "He's got a sister, you know. Young, recently widowed. She's got a son already, too. I don't see why I can't just step in, wed her, and unite our three houses. It'd be terribly good, wouldn't it?"

Melanie laughed. "Tell your father this," she said, feeling whatever semblance she had of a comprehensible English accent wash away with the wine and not particularly caring. "Is a good idea. He will love it."

Beatrice giggled and kicked Melanie's shin gently. "Don't be cheeky, it's a brilliant idea. They should make me Queen, I'd set England right."

"You'd need to be Pope," Melanie mused. "Perhaps this is what you can do. Become a nun, work your way up somehow, then— _patatra!_ You are the Pope, women marry women, everything is better."

"'Patatra,'" Beatrice repeated, her voice bright with an audible grin. "What a funny word."

"So is 'cheeky,'" Melanie countered, "but I don't say anything about this." A silence fell over them, and Melanie turned her head toward her best estimation of the other girl's eyes. "Have you heard of a poet called Sappho?" Aziraphale's library had several copies of her poems fully intact, and both he and her father had apparently spent a bit of time on Lesbos in her day. It had sounded like a damn good place to be, in Melanie's estimation.

"No. Who is he?"

She smiled. " _She_ was Greek. There isn’t much of her poetry left, but all the Greeks loved her. All the great poets and philosophers. And she—well, she wrote these _poems_."

"As poets do," Beatrice teased.

"No, but, you see—" She took a breath, and then she began to recite it. And as she watched Beatrice's face drift from interest to absolute bafflement, she realized she was reciting the poem in Ancient Greek. Apparently, Beatrice didn't speak it. She cringed. "Sorry. I don't know the poem in French, and my English won't do it justice."

"Well, it sounded pretty," said Beatrice encouragingly. "What was it about?"

"Helen of Troy," said Melanie. "She talks about how she'd prefer to see Helen's beautiful face than all of the armies of Lydia."

"Hm." There was the tickle of fingertips against Melanie's hand. Beatrice's fingers brushing her hand, perhaps hesitating after reaching out.

Without thinking, Melanie found her hand again and took it. With a firm, gentle tug, Beatrice pulled Melanie into a sitting position, her fingers toying with the bottom edge of her veil.

“May I see your eyes?” she whispered.

“No,” said Melanie. “Sorry.” She didn’t move away, though. Not just yet.

“That’s alright.” She heard her swallow. “This Sappho. Was she married?”

“No,” she said. “Not that I know of. Not to a man.”

Her heart pounded. This wasn't right, it wasn't what she was meant to be doing. She was here to get this girl married off to the shitty nobleman, not hold her hand and recit her Lesbian poetry. Obviously she'd been a little starved for company her age, but that was no reason to lose control of herself. She didn't even know what the girl looked like, for fuck's sake, and there was too much at stake for her to let her passions get the best of her. If Heaven checked up on Aziraphale, she and her father were as good as dead and Aziraphale was as good as damned. This was not something she could fuck up just because a girl gave her wine and the time of day.

She pulled away her hand and forced herself to sober up. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “This is… I’m sorry.”

“No,” said Beatrice quietly. “I’m sorry. I was making you uncomfortable.”

“No, no, you did nothing wrong. It was good.” She swallowed. “I just can’t.”

The girl sat upright next to her, based on the sound of her skirts falling over the side of the bed. “I wish I wasn’t getting married,” she said. Her tone was dead, resigned. She was someone who had accepted the fact that she was going to be miserable for the rest of her life.

And Melanie was going to be the one to deliver her to that misery. Then she’d go home to a father who loved her and the angel who’d ensured this girl’s misery, and then what? They were all immortal. Aziraphale wouldn’t remember this girl in a hundred years; her father might if Melanie made enough of a stink about her guilt, but Beatrice wouldn’t stick out as a person to him. She'd be an event at most, completely nonexistent except as a catalyst for whatever his daughter felt about the whole thing. But Melanie was here talking to Beatrice, getting to know her, and she had more power over Beatrice’s life than the other girl knew. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even ineffable, it was just a cruel thing to do to another human being.

What was it Papa had said? _She_ wasn’t going to be married off like that girl up north. She had freedom, and choices, and she didn’t have to do things based on what Heaven thought was good because there were a number of ways to do good. If she backed out Aziraphale would be furious, she was certain of that, but he wasn't stupid. He'd have made backup plans in case the girl ran away or something like that. Everything was going to be fine, so all she had to do was make her choice.

She sat up straight. "Beatrice," she said, reaching out and grasping her hand. "Do you trust me?"

"Trust you?"

"I need you to trust me," Melanie said. "I can get you out of here."

"What?"

Melanie sighed. Her father had always emphasized to her that she needed to keep her eyes hidden from every human she met, because there was every chance a human might react violently. Outside of the people who'd raised her, she'd only ever shown Luciano and her mother. Luciano had reacted well, because he knew her, and her mother had... Well, she'd come in ready for a confrontation, anyway. It wasn't much to go on, really.

Fuck it. She was two for two not getting killed for her appearance. "First of all," she said, ripping her veil off, "I'm not blind."

Pale jade eyes widened, as frightened as they were intrigued. Beatrice was plump in the way many noble girls were, her oval face dotted with freckles that would have dominated her complexion if she'd been a peasant and spent her life in the sun. Her hair was red, and it glowed with the flames of the candles lighting her room. Her lips parted with shock. "Oh," she said in a valiant attempt to save face.

She looked around the room and began gathering things they might need for a long journey. "Basically, I'm here because there are forces in the world that want you married, and I'm supposed to help, but I see now this is stupid, so we're going to run away and I'm going to make sure we don't get caught."

Beatrice gaped at her. “Who are you? _What_ are you?”

“We don’t have time,” Melanie grunted as she pulled a fur coat from Beatrice’s wardrobe and tossed it onto the bed. “I’m going to ask you again. Do you trust me?”

The girl swallowed, and then she sat up straight. “Yes. Yes, I trust you.”

* * *

Aziraphale sat draped over the arms of his favorite chair in the drawing room like a starfish, staring across at Crowley who lay cradled in his chair’s arms like an infant.

“Sssssso. So. Here’s the thing angel. We’re friends, right? You an’ me, we’ve always been friends.”

“Since the Beginning,” Aziraphale agreed, staring into his goblet.

“Right! That’s five and a half thousand years to, what, two months of sneaking around? That’s an awful lot of friendship to ruin with one little incident.”

“S’just a sad business, isn’t it?” Aziraphale mused. “You and me, not even meant to be friends, and here we are planning the end of our love affair. Back to whispering through the crack in the wall.”

Crowley craned his neck and squinted at him. “Are you comparing us to Pyramid an’… Pyrius an’… Those two Babylonian kids with the wall and the mulberry bush?”

“Pyramus and Thisbe,” said Aziraphale gravely.

“Pfffft!” He let his head drop back again and laughed. “Don’t be dramatic. We’re not Pyramid an’ Thebes, angel. We’re not _tragic_ , we’re… we’re… We’re doing our best, is what we are. We’ve _always_ done our best.” He sat up again and jabbed a lazy finger at him. “An’ you and me, we’re gonna _keep_ doing our best.”

Aziraphale lifted his head and stared across the room at Crowley. “But things will be different, won’t they?”

“Sure, sure,” said Crowley with a dismissive wave of his hand. “That’s why we’re talking about it. Because, see, we get to figure out _how_ it’s going to be different. It’s not just that we’ve done all these things, it’s that now we’ve got another person. S’not just us anymore.”

He pursed his lips. “I think… I’ll need time, of course. I’ll need to be used to not having you around before I see you again, but I agree that we should find a way to remain friends. Melanie, though, you want her away from—from—“ He gestured wildly around the room. “From all this, dear boy. Don’t you?”

Crowley stared at him. “M’not kicking her out, though.” He paused, and his eyes widened. “Am I?”

“You certainly wouldn’t be happy if she stayed.”

“Well, I don’t want her _gone._ I just want her, you know, on her own. Self-sufficient.” He furrowed his brow. “ _Is_ that kicking her out? Oh, no. I don't want to do that to her." He threw his head back again and groaned. “Seriously, Aziraphale, help me out.”

“Well, what’s wrong with kicking her out?” asked Aziraphale. “It’s for her own good, after all.”

Crowley sat up again and glared at the angel with unnatural yellow eyes.

Aziraphale blinked. “Ah. My dear, that was a little different. You were a member of an organized insurgency, not a child about to come of age.”

His glare didn’t relent, but his resolve seemed to. “I know,” he grumbled. “Just feels wrong.”

“Well,” said Aziraphale, steepling his fingers together thoughtfully, “instead of pushing her away from you, why don’t we try to find something to push her towards? What do you think Melanie wants to be when she grows up?”

* * *

It was cold, and she couldn't see in the dark like her father could, but eventually the road led them to an abandoned cottage with a large stable out back. Melanie dismounted from the horse, helped Beatrice off, and the three of them went inside. She got a fire going, drawing a magic circle around it to keep it contained and willing it to remain undetected, and then she sat back and held her feet out to it.

For the first time since they left the castle, Beatrice spoke. "How did you light that fire?"

Melanie looked up. "Oh. Uh, magic."

"Witchcraft?"

She laughed. “No. The Devil and I are not… friends, let’s say.”

"Are you touched by something? Some sort of changeling? One of the Good People from Under the Hill?"

Melanie squinted at her across the fire. "...If that is what you want.”

"If not those, then what?"

"I could be one of those if I knew what you were saying," she said distractedly, staring back into the fire. "I don't know what is a changing." She pulled her boots in and shifted upright onto her knees, clasping her hands in front of her and shutting her eyes.

"What are you doing?" the girl asked.

"Calling for help," said Melanie. "I think." For obvious reasons, she'd never prayed before, but she could think of no better way to contact an angel and she figured if she was direct she should be alright. _Aziraphale,_ she prayed. _It’s Melanie. If you can hear me, I fucked up and I need a hand. Also, uh, sorry? And thank you. Amen? Bye._ She opened her eyes and sat back. "There. I hope that worked."

"And if we don't get help?"

"Then we keep going tomorrow," said Melanie. "I have a place I can take you in London, unless you think of something better on the way."

Beatrice shivered. Then she stood, walked around the fire, and sat next to Melanie. "It's awfully cold," she said.

Melanie looked up at her, brow furrowed. "Is the fire not helping? I'm sorry, I can—"

"The fire is fine," said Beatrice slowly. "Only I'm s _o terribly cold_. Perhaps if we were to, you know, huddle together... For warmth..."

She stared at her. It wasn't as though Melanie hadn't flirted with plenty of girls before, but that had always involved some sort of disguise. And maybe the Lesbian poetry was flirting, a bit, accidentally, but Melanie had been drunk and she hadn't had to look at Beatrice while she was doing it. Now here she was, bare-eyed and entirely exposed, and a _girl_ was asking her to _huddle for warmth_. Her face grew hot, and she scooted closer.

Beatrice frowned at her. "If I'm being too forward—"

"You're not," Melanie squeaked. "Sorry. Please, keep being forward."

She grinned. "You're bold enough to spirit a girl away from her betrothal on horseback, but the moment you have her in your grasp you get shy about it?" She leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Funny sort of changeling you are."

Melanie laughed. It was a dizzy, halting, twittering thing. "I guess so."

Beatrice reached over and brushed a hair out of her face. “I should thank you,” she said, “for spiriting me away.” And then she leaned in and kissed her.

Melanie had never been kissed before. There hadn’t been time, not with Luciano to look after and her father’s targets to protect. So when Beatrice’s lips brushed hers, her hands flew to the other girl’s head and she pulled her to her, letting instinct take over. In that moment, for the first time since Venice, Melanie felt sure she was doing the right thing.

* * *

“She’s a good thief," said Crowley. He took a swig of wine from his goblet. "Maybe she could do that professionally. Sort of like… who’s the one the English have all gone barmy for in the last hundred years? Steals from the rich, gives to the poor?”

“Robert someone,” said Aziraphale vaguely. He shook his head as if to clear it. “She can’t be a professional thief, my dear boy. Dangerous business, that, not to mention morallily—er, morally. Not good.”

“S’for the poor, angel. _And_ stealing from the rich. That’s a two for one good deed, I say.”

“And killing people, probably,” Aziraphale pointed out. “And living in the woods to evade the Sheriff. S’not a comfortable life.”

“Hm.” Crowley frowned. “Pirate?”

“Crowley, that’s the same thing but on water.”

“Well she’s good at thieving! S’her main hobby outside of thwarting!”

“Thieving is hardly a thing to push her out to. She can thieve anywhere.”

Crowley sat up and jabbed a finger at him. “Which is why piracy is absolutely bloody inspired as a career path for her. It’s a boat, an’ she loves water! It’s perfect!”

“My dear boy, she needs options other than thieving. She likes feeling like she’s doing good, doesn’t she? She didn’t steal so much in Venice because it was her hobby, she stole because her best friend was poor and needed money.”

“ _And_ because it’s fun,” Crowley insisted.

“Perhaps. Not much of a thing to build a life around, though, thieving.” He scratched his chin. “Perhaps she could be some sort of court magician?”

Crowley squinted at him, and then he began to laugh. “Court magician! My daughter, some wealthy old bastard's Merlin! How’s _that_ meant to do any good, angel?”

Aziraphale felt his face grow hot. “She could influence whoever she’s serving…”

Crowley laughed even harder. “She’d hate it, Aziraphale. She’d absolutely _hate it._ ” When he finished laughing, his face faded into a thoughtful frown. “Serving people, though, I think she’d like that. Not kings and lords, mind, just people. And she’s good at magic, you’re right. Wards, healing, that sort of thing. She’d make a good cunning woman. Live in a cottage, or run a little shop in a city. It’d be good for traveling. She could do it anywhere, and she’d be in high demand for healing the sick and whatnot.”

“She could even do it on a boat,” Aziraphale agreed. He smiled. “She could go to a university, learn from the best medical and alchemical minds. I hear wonderful things about the hospitals in Baghdad.”

“Nuh,” said Crowley, shaking his head. “The Mongols sacked it since you last visited. Timbuktu’s where the best education is now. S’that or India, but India’s far.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “Yes. Out of our jurisdiction, though. She’d have to conceal herself carefully.”

“We can figure that out. We’ve drawn enough attention already, what with all the dying and slacking it off.”

“True, true. Still—“ And then he felt the unmistakable tickle of a prayer at the back of his head. This wasn’t a common occurrence for Aziraphale. Humans hadn’t generally heard of him, and the ones who had heard of him didn’t usually know he was an angel. Still, there it was, clear as day. _If you can hear me, I fucked up and I need a hand._

Crowley sat up in his chair and looked at him. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

He groaned. “Speaking of our girl. M’afraid we’ll have to cut this short, my dear.” He shut his eyes and winced as the alcohol left his body, and then he looked to Crowley. “Will you be alright on your own? I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“Yeah, sure. Is she okay?”

“She sounded more embarrassed than afraid. Nothing for you to worry about.”

Crowley grabbed the bottle on the table and topped up his goblet. “You underestimate my ability to worry.”

* * *

Aziraphale didn’t know what he expected to find, but as he opened the door to the stable Melanie’s prayer had led him to he didn’t expect to find the girl playing big spoon to Beatrice Starford in front of a cozy, open fire.

He cleared his throat loudly, and the two girls stirred. Beatrice sat up with a shock, and Melanie stretched and yawned.

“‘Ziraphale? That you?” she mumbled sleepily.

“Is this our help?” Beatrice whispered.

“Yes.” She stood and stretched. “Okay, Aziraphale, let’s get this over with,” she said, and she went outside.

Back out in the cold, Aziraphale crossed his arms. “You could have backed out, you know. I could have stepped in and overseen the marriage myself.”

“No,” said Melanie. “There can’t be a marriage. Not for her, Aziraphale.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve gone and gotten yourself attached.” He watched Melanie's face shift into something close to embarrassment, and he gasped scandalized. "Young lady! Don't tell me you and she—"

“It’s not just that,” she snapped. “This is wrong, Aziraphale, and Heaven is wrong to use this backwards society's customs instead of tearing them down. Girls shouldn’t be married off to whichever man has the best offer. Period.”

He threw his head back in supplication to… well, to Something. “No, my dear, they shouldn’t, but they _are._ That’s what we have to work with. Now, if you’d like me to take her home, I can take her back—“

She took a step back from him. “No.”

“Melanie—“

 _“No._ Not her _.”_

He sighed. “My dear girl, I admire your compassion, but you can’t simply defy the Divine Plan because your youthful urges have—“

Melanie cackled, the sharpness of it eaten up by the growing blanket of snow. “ _Urges?_ You want to talk about _urges,_ Aziraphale? I know you and my father aren’t in his room having late night tête-à-têtes about my moral upbringing, you _fucking_ hypocrite.”

Aziraphale felt the anger coursing through him cool into embarrassment of his own. “Oh, no. Melanie, my girl, listen—“

“No, _you_ listen,” she hissed, driving her finger into Aziraphale’s chest. “There is nothing good or divine about what we’re doing here, and I won’t stand aside and let you ruin this girl’s life because Heaven wants to use her as a pawn. God, I don’t know how you can fucking stand it. Is that why you don’t sleep at night? Because the shit you do in the name of Heaven would keep you up?”

He sighed. “Alright. Alright, we’ll take her someplace her father can’t find her. But _someone_ is going to wind up marrying _someone_ , Melanie. You’re right, perhaps there would be more good overall if we worked to change things, but you heard my orders. My job is to carry out Heaven’s will. I’ll help you defy this small piece of it, but that’s the most I can do.”

She finally moved out of his space, her jaw set. “I guess it is,” she said coldly. “Okay. We’ll take care of Beatrice first, and then I’m going home.”

* * *

They decided a convent would be the best place. Neither said anything, but both of them appreciated the layers of irony.

When she said goodbye, Melanie couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu that came over her as she remembered leaving Luciano in Verona, or when she said goodbye to her mother in France. The last year had held more goodbyes than Melanie had ever experienced at once, and she was sick of it. Still, she kept up appearances for Beatrice.

“Don’t forget about me when you’re Pope,” she said with an upbeat grin.

Beatrice leaned in and planted a kiss on her cheek. “I could never forget you, changeling girl. And I can never thank you enough.”

Melanie glanced back at Aziraphale and was grateful to see that his eyes were fixed firmly on the road. She put a gentle hand on the nape of the other girl’s neck and pulled her into a quick, soft kiss. “Good luck,” she whispered, and she went over to Aziraphale.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, dropping every pretense that the whole ordeal hadn't completely drained her.

He put a hand on her shoulder, and they appeared in the drawing room to find her father drinking wine directly out of a bottle. He stopped when they appeared, meeting Melanie’s gaze and pulling the bottle from his lips.

“Er…”

Melanie laughed, overcome with affection and gratitude for the opportunity to do so. “Didn’t expect me home so soon, did you?”

He blinked once. “I, er. Not really.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I should be going. I’ll sober you up, my dear boy, shall I?”

“Gently,” he slurred. Then a shudder ran through him, followed by a sharp wince. “ _Gently_ , I ssssaid.”

“Well I’ve never done it on you!” Aziraphale protested. He sighed. “Look, I really must be going. Don’t get into anymore trouble while I’m gone.” And, with a sound like wings fluttering, he vanished.

Melanie collapsed into the empty chair before the fire, avoiding her father’s eyes.

“Hey,” he said to her.

She looked up.

“You okay?”

“I don’t know.” She kicked off her boots and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I couldn’t go through with it. She was so nice to me, Papa, and she didn’t want to get married, and making her do it felt wrong.”

He gave her a small smile. “You’re a good girl, Mel.”

“Am I, though? I mean, I was doing this for _Heaven._ And I couldn’t.” She sighed and stared into the fire. “Maybe I’m too much like you for this kind of thing. It was a lot more fun pretending to buy souls than it was doing actual angel work.”

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s all me,” said Crowley. He stretched his arms up. “Have I ever told you about when Aziraphale and I first met?”

“Not really. I mean, you sort of have. It’s in the Bible.”

“Not this bit. You know he was a cherub at the time. Want to know why he’s a principality now?”

She turned and stared at him. “Is he okay with me knowing?”

Crowley smiled. “I think so. See, after I did my part with Adam and Eve, it fell to Aziraphale to drive them out of Eden. He took one look at them, saw how vulnerable and scared they were, and he gave them his flaming sword for warmth and protection. And when Heaven found out he’d lost the sword, he was demoted.”

Melanie nodded slowly. “Did it hurt? Getting demoted, I mean?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about it, and I’d as soon ask him about that as he’d ask me about Falling. I think he’s still got a bit of a chip on his shoulder about it, either way. He knows what it’s like to fall a little, so I reckon it makes him that much more terrified of falling all the way.”

“Huh.” She let her legs drop and sat crisscross. “So that’s why he’s so...?" She made a vague gesture, unsure how to articulate what, exactly, Aziraphale was so much of.

“That’s my theory, anyway, but I think it’s a solid one. You know him, he’ll think himself in circles to avoid how he really feels about things, but when something hits him hard enough it’s his heart that takes over.” He raised an eyebrow. “The two of you have got that in common, I think. The difference is that it’s not a problem for you if your mind and your heart match up.”

She sighed heavily, her head hitting the back of her seat. “Well, I don’t know what either of those want now. It’s not like you’re better yet. Someone still needs to do both of your jobs.”

“We can work that out when Aziraphale gets back. In the meantime, it’s just you and me for a bit. Maybe we can figure out what you really want together.”

She groaned. “I guess. I don’t know, I just wish we could go home and have things be like they were.”

“They weren’t exactly great before all this,” he pointed out. “The way things were is how we got to where we are now.” He paused. “That said, going back to Italy might be a nice change for you. Where did you leave Luciano and his mum, Verona?”

“Yeah.” She paused, considering this for a moment. “ _Yeah._ ”

A wily smirk played on his lips. “I hear Florence is a rather up and coming city these days. It’s not too far; nice and warm. Might be a good place for me to settle for a bit, since that powerful magician I told Hell was after me should have lost the scent by now.”

She giggled, ready to make some quip or other, but then a thought struck her. “What about Aziraphale?”

He stopped smirking, but to her surprise he didn’t look entirely sad. “It’s all perfectly amicable. Aziraphale’s been in and out of my life for thousands of years. This isn’t the first time we’ll be apart, and it won’t be the last time we're in the same place, either. And that's one of the advantages of you going off on your own, isn't it? You and Aziraphale can see each other whenever the two of you like. Once Aziraphale and I have had enough space, it can even be the three of us again from time to time. That's the great thing about living forever, Mel. We've got all the time in the world to figure out how this works. Okay?"

Melanie took a long, slow breath, and then she gave him a small smile. "Yeah," she said. "Okay."

* * *

**_June 1405_ **

The three of them stood at the dock, watching the workers load the Crowleys' surprisingly few possessions onto the boat.

"It'll be quiet without the two of you around," said Aziraphale.

"Probably a nice change for you," said Crowley dryly.

The angel scoffed. "I was being quite sincere with you!"

Melanie laughed. "We'll miss you, too, Aziraphale. Come visit Verona soon, alright?"

"I'll be terribly sorry to miss your next birthday. Eighteen years old! You know, the character for eighteen in Hebrew is—"

"'Chai.' Life" She crossed her arms, smirking. "That is cheesy as all hell."

He cast his eyes upward and let out a breath. " _Regardless_ , I didn't want to let the occasion go unmarked just because I won't be there. So..." He reached into the satchel he was carrying and pulled out a large, elegantly bound book. "For your new career," he said, handing it to her.

Melanie opened it and gasped. "De Luzzi's Mundinus!" She flipped through the pages, taking in the beautifully rendered anatomical diagrams. "Holy shit, Aziraphale, this is incredible."

"Any good healer should have access to the latest in medical science," he said warmly.

Melanie handed the book off to Crowley and practically jumped on Aziraphale, pulling him down into a tight hug. "Thank you so, so much."

He squeezed her gently. "I look forward to seeing what you do with it." Then he let go and kissed her forehead.

She smiled up at him. "That'll be sooner rather than later, I hope." Then she got up on her tip toes and kissed his cheek. "I'm boarding now," she said, giving her father a significant look. "Don't you two take too long, now."

Crowley watched her bound up the ramp onto the boat and sighed. He looked down at the book in his hand and held it up to Aziraphale. "Nice one," he said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Adding a little science to all the magic she'll be doing."

"Well, her foundation is as much science as it is magic," he said stiffly. "Comes of having family who took part in Creation."

"I suppose it does." Crowley tucked the book under his arm and offered Aziraphale his hand. "Well, angel, this has certainly been... a time."

"Yes," said Aziraphale, taking his hand and shaking it firmly. He hesitated, not quite ready to let go, and he met Crowley's eyes behind his tinted spectacles.

The two of them stood there like that for a while, staring at each other. They were each remembering what they'd had in their short time together, thinking on what they were each giving up and the loneliness each was going back to. Then, almost simultaneously, they both began to laugh and collapsed into a warm hug.

"We really are the two stupidest creatures alive," said Crowley.

"I really don't know how we've managed to get Melanie this close to eighteen," Aziraphale agreed. "Not to imply she'll make it, of course. I know better than to tempt fate, knowing us."

"Here, here." He pulled away. "Take all the time you need apart from me, but not much longer than that, alright? I'm about to go from me and a kid, to me and you and a kid, to just me for the first time in two decades."

Aziraphale smiled sadly. "I'll endeavor to recover quickly. Until then, my dear."

"'Til then," said Crowley, returning his smile.

As Aziraphale watched him go, he felt a pang of regret, just as he'd expected. It wasn't the first time he'd felt regret watching Crowley leave over the millennia, and this time it was more acute, but he also felt somewhat relieved. Not just because Crowley was going and they could both put the guilt their affair had spawned behind them, though that was part of it. But whoever they were to each other from here on out, they had something concrete to bind them together as friends rather than enemies.

The boat pulled away and Aziraphale walked home, already making plans in his head to visit his girl in Verona.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, folks!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So quick heads up this is kind of a montage-ish chapter and the subject is immortality so, like, get ready for a bit of mortality. 
> 
> Which is to say, cw: minor character death

**_Verona, 1410_ **

Aziraphale stood at the door and took a deep breath. He could feel Crowley in there, and he was certain Crowley felt him, too. It wasn't their first time seeing each other since they parted in London, but it had been a couple of years and things were still a little strange. Plus, there were going to be other people around. Melanie had emphasized several times in her letter that there were going to have to interact with humans other than Luciano and his wife Felicia. Felicia knew everything, of course, because Melanie was an integral part of her husband's life. Felicia's family, on the other hand, had no idea that their grandson's christening was about to be attended by a demon, or that it was an angel doing the actual christening.

Aziraphale hadn't posed as a priest in a very long time, and as an angel he was aware that none of the grand ceremony of Catholicism was strictly necessary, but Melanie was going to be the child's godmother and she thought getting her new godchild blessed by an angel would be a good first move. Besides, with Crowley there to support her they needed the ceremony conducted by someone who knew not to sling holy water anywhere near him while he was already toughing it out in a house of God.

Felicia opened the door. Luciano's wife was a short, plump young woman with rosy cheeks and a face that looked sweet even in her worst moods.  She gave him an apologetic grimace for the cacophony behind her. Her mother was arguing with Signora Propizio about whether the baby in Luciano’s arms was swaddled tightly enough, with Crowley and Melanie standing in the background watching the whole affair like a jeu de paume, the proverbial ball bouncing back and forth between the two women at an impressive pace and volume.

“Thank you for coming all this way, Aziraphale,” said Felicia tiredly. Then she turned around and barked, “Mamma! Father Felice’s here!”

The chaos moved to Aziraphale, Felicia’s mother fawning over the Venetian priest she’d heard so very much about, her father standing behind the woman looking deeply embarrassed. Luciano handed the baby off to Melanie. A veil was covering half her face for the sake of Felicia's family, but from her body language Aziraphale could see plain as day that she was terrified to be holding him. As Signora Propizio started yammering in his ear to try to draw her attention away from the other grandmother, he caught a glimpse of Crowley coming over and helping Melanie reposition the baby in her arms.

They locked eyes through Crowley's spectacles. Aziraphale prepared for a bit of awkwardness, but then Crowley made a show of looking Aziraphale's priest's robes up and down and smirking at them. In return, Aziraphale made a show of looking smugly from Crowley to the baby and back again.

Crowley snorted and gestured to Melanie, living proof of his experience with babies. Not that she was much of a baby, these days. Crowley looked ten years older than her at the absolute most, and that was only if he was a reasonably young-looking thirty and she was a particularly mature-looking twenty.

Once he'd thrown off the warring nonnas and managed to get Aziraphale inside, Luciano guided him to the two Crowleys and said, rather pointedly, "Father, you remember Melanie's brother Antonio."

He smiled at Crowley, holding back a laugh. "How could I forget dear brother Antonio?"

Things went smoothly in the church. It was empty, thanks to a minor miracle on Aziraphale's part. Even behind her veil, it was clear Melanie was beaming. The one wrinkle was Crowley. It wasn’t _just_ the holy energy, although he did look increasingly uncomfortable as the christening went on. By the end he could barely conceal his labored breathing and he was leaning heavily on one of the pews. However, that wasn’t the thing that bothered Aziraphale. The thing that bothered Aziraphale was the dark expression that roosted on his face when everyone’s attention went to the ceremony and stayed there the entire time. If he didn’t know him so well he might not have noticed it, but because he knew him he couldn't ignore it.

Once the ceremony was over, after the celebrations at the Propizio home, Aziraphale invited Crowley for a drink at the inn where he was staying and asked him about it.

Crowley took a moment to drink deeply from his goblet, and then he said, “Mel and I were talking on the way to the church. She’s really happy about all this.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Too happy, angel. She told me she was glad I was here because this is probably the closest I’ll ever get to her giving me grandchildren.”

Aziraphale's mind immediately began to race. Melanie couldn't be allowed to have children. It was bad enough having one Nephil alive in the world that Heaven already knew existed. If she had children, then those children might have children who'd keep having more children until God rained down another Flood. If Crowley was allowed to encourage her, they were all doomed. He cleared his throat. “Did you… _want_ grandchildren?”

“No!” He rolled his eyes, took a long drink, and pointed at Aziraphale. “Let me lay out the next, oh, fifty or so for you. Two years from now, Luciano finds his first grey hair. In ten years, he’s starting to get crow’s feet. In twenty years he starts getting back pain, and from there it’s all maintenance while he slowly deteriorates beyond saving and then dies after another twenty years—and that's if he’s lucky. Meanwhile Melanie stays exactly the same as she is now, and she gets to watch the whole cycle start over with her godchild, and her godchild’s children, and so on for as long as she can stand to watch.”

He winced, feeling guilty his mind hadn't gone there first. “Do we say something?”

Crowley shook his head. “She knows it’s coming, but she’s not going to understand it until it’s actually happened. I don't know what we could say that would help her, anyway. We watch people grow old and die, sure, but they're not... Those two were kids together. They grew up together, learned how the world works together. You and me, we were never kids. The closest thing we've got to someone like that is, well, each other." He looked away and drank again. "And then there's the baby. I can put myself in Melanie's shoes better on that front, but only because I've got a kid of my own and that's exactly the sort of thing that shows up in my nightmares."

"We'll just have to be there for her when the time comes," said Aziraphale, putting a hand on Crowley's shoulder. "After all, she grew up with us, too. She isn't losing everything."

He sighed, shrugging his hand off gently. "I'm sure that'll be enough, one day, but the next fifty years are going to be a really shit time."

—

**_1417_ **

From time to time, Crowley's business in Florence brought him to Verona. He tried not to let things spill over too much for Melanie's sake, but sometimes it couldn't be helped and Melanie was never unhappy to see him so long as he didn't bring up business. And, with a permanent storefront at last, she was rarely difficult to find.

There was a little boy standing in front of the shop, a serious expression on his face.

Crowley smiled. "This can't be Gerodi Propizio! Gosh, you've grown."

The boy looked up, hazel eyes wide, and he stood at attention. "Papa says no one is to come in until the client leaves," he recited.

He spread his arms out, laughing. "Gerodi, kid, don't you recognize me?"

Gerodi's brain visibly whirred as he switched from the task he'd been given into the polite but distant attitude he reserved for adults he knew but didn't know well. "I remember you, Signor Crolli," he said. "You're Zia Melanie's..." He cocked his head. "Are you really her dad? My dad's papa has silver hair, and yours is black. And you don't have lines on your face."

"Yeah, I'm her dad." He crossed his arms. "How old do you think I am? Best guess."

The little boy frowned thoughtfully. "Forty?"

He grinned. "Nope."

"Four _hundred?_ " asked the boy, holding back a giggle.

"You're getting warmer. Look, it’s a nice day. Why don’t you run along and play? I can watch the shop for you, nobody’s going to bother me.”

Gerodi had his mother’s sweet face and her wide, expressive eyes. Crowley didn’t know him well, but even if he hadn’t been a demon with thousands of years of practice picking up on tells he’d have known the boy was concealing something when he cast his eyes to the side and said, “Okay.”

Crowley grabbed at the hood hanging around his neck as he started walking away. “Hang on, hang on. What are you hiding?”

“Nothing,” he said, still looking down. “Can I go play?”

"Look, far be it from me to be a stickler for rules, but I don't want to undermine my kid's friends' authority. Did your mum and dad say you couldn't go play?"

"Yeah..." he admitted.

"In that case," said Crowley, "I'll keep you company while I wait for your aunt." He leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the doorway to the kid, settling in.

Gerodi sighed with disappointment, and then he looked over at Crowley. "So _more_ than four hundred?"

Crowley opened his mouth to reply, but then the door opened and a figure whose face was concealed whirled out.

"Thank you again for your help," said the figure. "Once nightly with the tea, you said?"

Melanie smiled a syrupy smile. "That's right. If it hasn't worked yet, come back for more tea next week." As they finished up business, Melanie cast a quick glance at Crowley, her eyebrows lifting in surprise, but she didn't say anything while the customer was around.

He stared at her. She was standing in broad daylight with her eyes completely uncovered, and the customer she was talking to didn't seem to notice a thing. Crowley adjusted his vision until he could see a subtle haze of magic over her eyes. It was some sort of glamour, he supposed, nothing too difficult for a typical Nephil with the right know-how to pull off, but he hadn't thought Melanie was a typical Nephil in this particular regard. She had his eyes, and his eyes were part of a curse. Not that he felt one way or the other about such a fixed part of his appearance after five and a half millennia; it was just that he could think of more than a few times it might have been nice to be able to make them look brown for a moment. And of course it was a curse from God, so you never knew how far the whole sins of the father thing was going to go.

He'd raised Melanie under the assumption that she had exactly as little control over her appearance as he did. It was something he'd felt badly about since the first time he held her, and his guilt had only grown as she'd gotten older. Crowley knew how to work with his eyes to suit the life he lived, but Melanie had never wanted to live anything resembling the same life as him and he didn't know how to help her live hers without isolating herself. But here she was, out in the open with what appeared to be a functioning glamour over her eyes.

He probably should have felt relieved, but somehow he felt even worse. She'd been so stubborn about covering her eyes when she was small, and impressing the importance of doing so on her without making her feel as though she had something to be ashamed of had been a difficult tightrope to walk. Even when she was older and understood better, she was used to making eye contact with the people she trusted and she'd slip up if she was out with him in public. And he'd always scolded her for it because he wanted her to be safe, and she'd always glowered at him even as she hid them again because she wanted to be able to meet the world's eyes like everyone else.

And apparently she could have had that all along, but he'd never even thought to check because he was too caught up in his own guilt and fear for her safety.

Melanie shooed the customer away, and as soon as they were alone she pulled Crowley into a tight hug. "What the hell are you doing here?" she asked, her smile evident in her voice.

Crowley pulled back and gave her a lazy grin. "Babysitting, apparently," he replied, jerking his head at Gerodi.

Melanie looked down at Gerodi. “Okay, shrimp, time to help your papa do the books.”

Gerodi crossed his arms. “I _hate_ the books. They’re _boring._ ”

“They are,” Melanie agreed, “and one day when you have children, you can make _them_ do the books. But for now, you have to learn how so you can do them yourself first.”

“I wouldn’t be a dad like that,” Gerodi grumbled. “I’ll be a _way_ better dad.”

Melanie gave him an indulgent smile. “I’m sure you will, but right now you’re a little boy and Luciano is _your_ dad, and he needs to teach you figures. Now go on inside and take it up with him, my papa is our guest and it’s rude to argue in front of him.”

The little boy slunk inside, and Melanie sighed. “Let’s make ourselves scarce and go for a walk. I was _not_ looking forward to getting dragged into that fight again.”

Crowley smirked as they started walking. “Oh, maybe I should go and let you get a taste of your own medicine.”

Melanie laughed. “Gerodi _wishes_ he could put up a ward to keep grownups out of his room. Then we couldn’t get in there and try to make him learn reading and arithmetic. I don’t know what it is, Papa, he just hates it.”

“Maybe he’s having trouble learning it,” said Crowley with a shrug.

“I mean he is, but he’s so clever. I don’t understand why he’s having so much trouble with it. About all he can do is write his name and count to ten.”

“Some humans’ brains just aren’t built to read words like everyone else. Maybe you should ask him what he has trouble with and change tactics. Or don’t make him try and learn how to read. It's the fifteenth century, find him a good apprenticeship working with his hands and he'll make a good living.”

Melanie sighed. “Luciano and Felicia don't want him in an apprenticeship, that would mean he’d have to live with someone else and work for them. I’ll keep an open mind, but I want this to work out. The whole point of my shop being a family thing is we get to stick together and look after our own. It’s not like I _need_ Luciano in there with me.”

“Yeah, I noticed you’re giving out fake magic teas now,” said Crowley dryly. “Wealthy client?”

“And an asshole,” said Melanie, cheering. “I healed her a _little_ , I just need her to keep coming back so we can afford to treat other people for free.”

“And afford good wine.”

“And afford good wine,” Melanie agreed. “I’m trying to be a decent person, here, not a saint. You think I don’t charge the wealthy extra whenever a plague hits Verona?”

Crowley laughed and threw an arm around her shoulders for a moment, hugging her to him. “Good. I’d have to disown you, otherwise.” He let go. Then, trying to keep the strain out of his conversational tone, he asked, “So you’re using a glamour on your eyes, now, eh?”

Melanie kept her eyes ahead of her. “Uh. Yeah. Figured out how a few months ago.”

“And it’s working? Consistently, I mean?”

“So far so good,” she said, shrugging. Then she looked at him. “You can't do it, can you?"

“No, that would rather defeat the purpose," said Crowley stiffly. “So what color are people seeing?”

“Brown when I’m off the clock.” Then she gave him a wily grin. “As for my clientele, no one's really sure. It adds to my mystique, see, making them forget the second they notice. It’s great, I have plausible deniability and I still get to freak people out. Otherwise what's the point of having spooky snake eyes, right?”

Crowley took a moment to chew this over, and then he smiled. “That’s _good_ , Mel. That’s really good.”

—

**_1429_ **

It was the week after Melanie's forty-second birthday. Aziraphale had been disappointed to miss the day of, but since he and Crowley were finally both free at the same time they all decided it was close enough that they ought to just wait and celebrate it as a family.

Aziraphale was finding that forty-two was a strange age for someone who'd stopped aging nearly half her lifetime ago. In appearance she looked barely older than her friends’ children, but there was something in the way she carried herself and interacted with everyone. She teased Luciano about things he’d done when they were young together, told embarrassing stories about the children to Aziraphale and Crowley, bored her father and both of the Propizio girls discussing the mundane details of the family business with Felicia.

She was also a third of the way toward being an empty nester. Gerodi had moved away the year before. He never learned how to read, thanks to what turned out to be an issue keeping the letters he was reading in order, but he'd shown a real knack for herbalism and since he ended up deciding he wanted to strike out on his own both Melanie and Luciano had used whatever old connections they could find in Venice to secure him with a shop and a literate assistant of his very own. Meanwhile, Luciano and Felicia had two teenaged daughters still living with them, and it was jarring to hear them call a woman who looked hardly more than half a decade their senior.

Luciano and Felicia themselves lived an easy life for two working people in the fifteenth century. Melanie had seen to it that Luciano never wanted for food as a child and facilitated a good living for he and his wife through her business, and he was certain she'd never let them see a day of sickness in their lives. They were both strong and fit—for middle age, at any rate. Both of them were well on their way to grey, the lines on their faces deepening every time Aziraphale saw them.

Crowley retired to his inn for the evening, but Aziraphale stuck around until Melanie was the only one left awake.

She smiled at him from her seat across from him at the apothecary table. All the bottle and jars that were normally scattered throughout the room were packed away for the night, the books back on their shelves, the linens and tools Melanie used for healing packed away in drawers. The only element of the usual magical cacophony one could find there was the circle painted on the ceiling. It looked nearly identical to the one in her childhood bedroom, except for a few additional symbols that warded against angels as well as demons. It had taken a bit of experimentation, and the experience hadn't been terribly comfortable for Aziraphale, but it was worth it for Melanie's peace of mind. His sigil was written in chalk right next to Crowley's.

"The party's over, Aziraphale." She yawned. "I've had plenty of fun tonight, get out of here and read a book or something."

He hesitated. Gerodi's christening hadn't been the last time he and Crowley had discussed the subject of Melanie's involvement with her human friends, and Crowley always landed on the same conclusion as he had the first time. But, looking at Melanie now, Aziraphale realized Crowley was the one who always got overly involved. For Heaven's sake, he'd been in such a tizzy over the fourteenth century he'd slipped up for the first time in five thousand years and the proof was sitting right in front of him. He had to say something to her, didn't he?

He met her smile with one that felt false the moment it hit his face. "Of course, my dear. I just wanted to check in with you. Not that I really celebrate a birthday myself, but anniversaries like this can be difficult when you're in the midst of a transitional period."

Her smile faded, and her brow furrowed. "Transitional?"

"Oh, dear," Aziraphale sighed, "how to put this? Well. I imagine you might have noticed by now that your friends look more likely to be your parents than your actual father does."

Melanie stared at him. "I mean, yeah, I don't age. What's your point?"

"The fact that you don't age is my point, Melanie. It isn't just cosmetic, you understand. You're immortal, and your friends... aren't."

She sat up straighter. "Is something wrong with them? Did you sense something I couldn't?"

"Oh, no! No!" He held up two placating hands. "Far from it, dear, they're in perfect health. I just wanted to be certain that you were aware of what's coming in the next few decades."

Her face darkened. "Yeah, I know. I have time, Aziraphale."

He sucked in a breath. "Not as much time as you think, my dear. I know this is your first time dealing with this sort of thing, and as I'm rather a dab hand at it by this point I thought I might share a bit of advice."

"And that is?" she asked, her eyebrow skeptically aloft.

"Tonight was wonderful. Your friends are both sharp and lively, the girls are two of the most charming young women I've ever met, and Gerodi sounds as though he's doing rather well in his new profession. That's how you'll want to remember all of them, years from now. Staying and watching them deteriorate is only going to tarnish that memory for you."

Melanie lowered her brow, looking away and pursing her lips as she always did when presented with an idea to chew on. Then she nodded, met his eyes, and said, "Thank you, Aziraphale, but I'm not leaving my family just because it's going to hurt when the inevitable comes." She got out her seat and rounded the table, stopping by him to plant a kiss on his cheek. "I'll see you at breakfast?"

"Of course," said Aziraphale. He gave her a sad smile. "Happy birthday, my girl."

—

**_1480_**

Time marched on, pulling them all further and further away from the fourteenth century.

Luciano's eldest daughter Giovanna was the first to have children—" _Great grand-children_ ," Crowley had muttered sardonically over drinks with Aziraphale—and then her sister Bella had twins a few years after. It took Gerodi a bit longer than his sisters to settle down, but in 1443 he and his wife welcomed their son Daniele into the world. Luciano and Felicia watched with pride as their family grew.

As for Melanie, she stayed the same through it all, giving the elder Propizios' roles in the shop to Giovanna and to Bella's husband Aroldo when their parents retired a few years after Daniele was born. Luciano and Felicia looked older every visit, and eventually they began to slow down. Nobody brought it up, not Aziraphale or either of the Crowleys, and if Melanie was beginning to feel the gap that aging had put between herself and her friends she never showed it with company present.

It was Felicia who went first. She died in 1475 from a stroke that claimed her too quickly to be especially frightening or painful.

Melanie took it hard. Luciano took it harder, of course, and at that gave Melanie something  to do. Helping had always made her feel better. But, the two elder immortals agreed, it was time to start looking after their girl a little more closely. England was too far for Aziraphale to check in much more frequently than he normally did, but after Felicia went Crowley started more or less splitting his time between Verona and Florence—much to the irritation of the promising young artist he'd started seeing in the latter.

Crowley wasn't in town when Luciano died five years later, but he arrived the day after and was sent to get Gerodi and his family from Venice as quickly as his powers would allow while Aziraphale (who'd come as soon as he heard) stayed for moral support.

Without Luciano around, Melanie handled the whole thing with poise and compassion. However young she looked, she was the family elder, and she clung to the role like it was a shield. There were a wake and funeral to plan, children to comfort, a headstone to purchase. Crowley stuck around through it all, and then for weeks after the funeral, and he wasn't surprised in the least when she finally came calling at the inn where he was staying in the middle of her work day.

They went up to his room and he held her as she cried, and when he'd wiped away her tears he said, "Listen, I don't think you should be working now while you're trying to sort through all of this. Why don't you take a holiday?"

She pulled a handkerchief out of the bust of her dress and blew into it. "I can't leave now, Papa, what about the shop? The patients—"

"—are getting more help than the natural order calls for, Melanie. If you worry that much every time you leave the shop for a long period of time, maybe you should let it go.”

“But the kids—“

“—are grown, and they have been for a long time. Now, come on, there's a great big world out there and you've seen about three parts of it. Let me take you someplace you've never been. How about Spain? It's been ages since I've been to Spain. It's lovely there, the beaches are beautiful and it's got some of the best seafood I've ever had. And you'll love the wine," he added hopefully.

Melanie squinted at him. “You want to go to Spain and get your daughter drunk?”

He shrugged. “You’ve seen what a single human lifespan looks like. Now you’ve got to figure out what to do with the rest of eternity. Personally, I’d like to make an argument in favor of letting yourself enjoy it. Being immortal is _fun,_ Melanie, honest.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Not this bit, I mean,” he amended, “but I don’t imagine you’re going to have another Luciano in your life. And obviously there will be other people you’ll love and mourn, but you can’t let mourning and carrying on Luciano’s legacy be the only thing you do with your life. I mean, really, you’re a nonagenarian with the energy and metabolism of a girl sixty-five years your junior. You should be traveling, exploring, and, yes, drinking for the pleasure of it. At the very least it’ll help you drown your sorrows, eh?”

It wasn’t the first time she’d laughed since Luciano had died—the Propizio children had grown up around her sense of humor, after all, and there were plenty of funny stories shared at the wake—but it was her first laugh since she’d let herself break down so it still felt like an accomplishment. “‘Drown your sorrows’ is probably the worst advice I have ever heard from a parent.”

He smirked. “Hey, don’t knock it. If I didn’t drown my sorrows over a dead human from time to time, you wouldn’t exist.”

Melanie made a face. “Well, if I didn’t need a drink before…”

“Come on,” he said, elbowing her playfully. “I’ll show you a good time. We can do anything you like.”

She pursed her lips. “You said there were beaches?”

He nodded encouragingly. “You used to love the beach we lived on in France. Do you remember?”

Her lips released into a wistful smile. “Yeah. God, I don’t think I’ve set foot on a beach since that time we went to Sorrento. How old was I, ten? Twelve?”

“Don’t remember. I do love that beach, though. Always have; it used to be my favorite day trip from Pompeii.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Melanie with a roll of her eyes. “I think you told me once an hour while we were there.”

“Well, I haven’t spent much time in Spain so you won’t have to worry about me getting nostalgic there.” He grinned. “Come on, Mel. Are you in or are you out?”

She sighed, but she was smiling. “I guess I’m in.”

Crowley beamed. “You’ll love it. Trust me, kid, a relaxing beach holiday is just what you need, and it’s exactly what you’re going to get.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I feel fairly certain that nobody expects what's going to happen in the next chapter. :)
> 
> EDIT: Also, it used to say 1478 but I changed it to 1480 for extremely subtle historical reasons nobody but me was going to notice.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.
> 
> So the whole Concept of this chapter is kind of what inspired me to write this fic in the first place, and I'm really really stoked to finally be here at this part! It's not the end of the fic or anything, but like... ahhhhh it's a big moment to me so I really hope y'all like it

There wasn't a cave at the end of the beach, much to Melanie's disappointment. She'd been hoping there might be, or some tidepools, or a seal sunning itself, or at the very least an interesting piece of driftwood. All that was waiting for her at the very edge of the cove was a steep cliff face of rocks, dirt, and dry brush. Seeing nothing else that might make the thigh burn from a walk in the sand worth her while, she dove into the water and swam along the shore for a bit. The current was gentle, the air cool in contrast to the warm water, and the weight off her legs was a welcome relief.

She got out after a few minutes and walked the rest of the way to where her father was sleeping on the beach. It was funny; he was always at his least human at the beach, reveling in the opportunity to buck propriety and give in to his reptilian instinct to bask in the sun, but Melanie had always found it comforting to see him like that. It reminded her of when she'd been small enough to curl up against his chest and bask with him.

It felt silly. She was ninety-two years old and as young and strong as ever. She'd watched her own power reduce her father to almost nothing, she had herself helped bring up two generations of children, and after all that she was still the little girl who used to crawl into her papa's bed at night when she believed the monsters in her fairy tales were out to get her. That was her own human instinct, she supposed. The person who'd brought her up was still around, and he was always going to feel safe.

Which, on top of making her feel silly, made her feel utterly lousy for being in Spain so soon after the children she'd brought up had become orphans. They were grown, yes, but so was she. And if she needed her father right now, shouldn't she be with the kids who probably needed their zia more?

"Melanie, they're not just grown, they're _old_ ," said Papa that night at the cantina. "They've got another ten or twenty years, if they're lucky, and then you're going to have to watch them die, too." He sighed and took a sip of his sangria. "Look, neither of us ages. Whether it's today or a thousand years from now, I'm not risking much being here for you. It's not a question of parental obligation, it's how much your heart can take before it shatters. If you don't do anything stupid and if you aren't supremely unlucky, you've got quite a long life ahead of you. Long enough to rack up a whole lot of regrets, and even longer to have to live with them."

She took a long sip of her own drink. "I'll regret that I wasn't there for them."

"Well, sure," he said. "You were bound to come away with a few regrets the moment you started making friends with humans. That's the tradeoff for eternal life. What you've got to figure out is what regrets you're willing to live with."

Melanie put her drink down and met his eyes from behind the dark spectacles he was wearing. "Well, what's the line? You make friends with humans. Hell, more than friends. I mean, hey, I exist."

"I mean, that was more..." He paused. "No, that's actually a fair point, we _were_ both grieving her husband. But that's because I let myself get too close to him during a plague. It was a mistake, and not one I make often.”

She gave him a tired smile. “What, sewing wild oats? I hope not.”

He snorted. “You know blessed well I meant getting attached. I’ve never had someone like Luciano, but imagine you lost someone like Felicia at least twice a decade every decade for about forty years. That’s where I was when you came along, and if you hadn’t I don’t know how long it would have taken to pull myself out of that slump. But you've got to have an exit strategy with humans, is my point. Say your goodbyes while they're still the people you want to remember, not when they're dying, and you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache."

She picked up her drink again and looked into it. "Aziraphale tried to tell me the same thing, you know."

Papa's voice was carefully blank. "Did he really?"

"Just once." She let out a single, breathy laugh. "About fifty years ago, I think. God. That really wasn't all that long ago, was it?"

"No," he agreed. He took another generous sip of his drink. "Look, I'm not saying it's easy. I knew Luciano was going to be a hard one to lose, but I also knew you'd regret not seeing that friendship through to the very end. It's up to you whether that's true for his kids, and I'll help you through whatever you decide, but after that you've got to start living for yourself."

She sighed and followed suit with her own drink. "But if I'm just living for me, what's the point? I mean, I know your job sucks, but at least you have something else keeping you going. I don't want to live a life where I just use people to pass the time and then abandon them to keep from getting hurt."

Her father took a deep breath and set his drink to the side, making room for him to clasp his hands on the table with his pointer fingers up. "Let me just..." He unclasped his hands and began drumming his fingers on the table. "I'm going to say something that I know you're going to want to argue straightaway, but I need you to hear me out until I've made my point. Alright?"

"Okay," said Melanie, holding her drink to her lips so she had something to do while she listened.

"I would give just about anything to be in your position.” He paused and, seeing the irritation Melanie was making no effort to hide, began to speak more quickly. “And I don't say that lightly, I mean with all the grief and feeling lost and everything, because, Melanie, you've got something I'll never have. You're free. I mean, there have only ever been two options for me. I failed spectacularly at the first option, and now I'm stuck with eternal damnation because there’s nowhere else for me to go. I can never stop being what I am, and you've seen what happens if I try to stop doing what the thing that I am entails. You, though? You've got free will. You're human in all the ways that count, but with time and power most humans never get, and all the pain you're going through now is going to be so worth it because when it stops hurting you'll have decided what that means. Because that's what you are, you're somebody who gets to choose."

She sighed and trained about half her cup. "I guess. Maybe this is a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. Not that I wish I was a demon, but I wish I had something, you know? Even the kids have jobs to get back to and families to support. Outside of them, I don't have anything." She glanced at him. "I mean, I could let you live vicariously through my free will or whatever, but I have a feeling that would be a lot of extended vacations like this."

Papa shrugged. "I don't want you to do what I'd do, Mel, I want to figure out what _you_ want to do. _That's_ the thing I'm living vicariously through."

"Well," she said, lifting an eyebrow, "that's not very helpful."

He laughed—and then he sat up rod straight, looking around the room as though he'd just heard a sudden noise. Melanie couldn't see through his spectacles in the dim light of the cantina, but she was sure there was fear in his eyes. "Something's coming, Mel. You've got to run."

She was up and moving before he'd finished talking. "I'll go hide at the house," she said quietly, and she left.

Melanie only didn't run back to the house they were renting out for the time being because she didn't want to draw suspicion. When she finally got there, she ran to her room, drew a ward, and waited. Within twenty minutes, she heard the front door open and shut.There was a knock at her door. “Come on out, kid. It’s safe.”

She burst through the door and pulled her father into a tight hug. It was only when she heard him gasp and felt a sudden, elastic resistance that she realized she'd pulled him up against the boundary of the room. “Sorry," she said, letting go.

He stepped back and straightened the bottom of his tunic, looking mildly queasy but no worse for wear. “That’s alright. You didn’t write me in?”

“I was in a rush, I forgot. Are you okay? What happened?”

His expression was no less dazed than it had been when she hugged him. “I got a commendation,” he said distantly. “There’s an inquisition on in Aragon. Well, all over Spain, but the hub is in Aragon.”

Melanie squinted. “When exactly did you get around to this?”

“I didn’t. I’ve been with you the whole time, haven’t I? Apparently it’s big. Something to do with Jews and Muslims there—well, conversos, technically, but it sounds as though the Church isn’t making much of a distinction.”

She furrowed her brow. “Huh. And Hell’s happy about it?”

“Apparently. Anyway, I’m sorry for the scare," he said absently, looking around the room as though he was looking for a place to set his thoughts down.

Melanie stepped safely out of the room and put a hand on his upper arm. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine," he said, shrugging her hand off. He looked at her. “Is it alright if I go to Aragon tomorrow to have a look so I can write the report for this? I’ll only be gone a day, I can just fly there and back.”

“Sure." She gave him what she hoped looked like an easy smile. "I’ve been wanting to explore the town anyway.”

“And you’ll be okay?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s one day, Papa. I’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll try to be back to meet you for dinner, but don’t wait up for me if I take too long.”

The next morning, she woke up early to get a glimpse of her father taking off from the beach. She'd rarely ever gotten to see them. It wasn’t as though he was in the habit of walking around the house with his shirt off and his spare appendages out, and the couple of times Melanie had walked in on him preening (or grooming himself, he’d called it, but _honestly_ ) he’d acted as though she’d just caught him doing something embarrassing.

Maybe it was, for a demon—or for the demon Crowley around his daughter, more specifically. His wings were rather angelic-looking, all shining feathers of sapphire and emerald with flecks of purple, red, and what appeared to be actual gold popping brightly against the warm brown of his skin. Melanie knew better than to think an angel was anything special to be, but all the same her father didn't seem to like reminding her that he used to be one. Perhaps there was more hurt there than he wanted to let on to her, or he was worried she’d think it was something to be sad about. Considering how he talked about Heaven, he probably would have been embarrassed to be thought of as an angel with or without the bad memories.

She didn't get why he worried about it around her. As far as Melanie was concerned her father was from Heaven the way she was from France. It was a formative part of her life, to be sure, but one that hadn’t been immediately relevant in a long time. Not to mention neither Heaven nor France was nearly as nice as their respective reputations made them out to be.He turned around once and gave her a sheepish wave. Then he faced the sea, crouched on one knee, spread his wings, and disappeared into the sky.

She was anxious all day, whatever she'd promised her father, and not even the chance to check out the local cathedral without forcing her father to either wait outside or suffer next to her was enough to distract her from it. Someone from Hell had very nearly stumbled onto her, and now Papa was out of her sight. Not that she begrudged him leaving. Whatever Hell had commended him for, it was clear it was disturbing him. If he needed a day to go to Aragon and reassure himself, she wasn't about to stop him for her sake.

He wasn't home for dinner, so she ate a quick meal on her own and tried to read before bed. Clocks weren't exactly commonplace, so she wasn't certain at what time she heard a crashing sound from the cellar, but she'd nearly burned all the way through her candle so it had to be pretty late.

She tossed a protective amulet around her neck just in case, picked up her candle, and ran downstairs. There was the sound of a cork popping coming from the cellar, and she sighed and set the amulet on the nearest end table before heading down. She expected he'd probably done something clumsy, or maybe he'd stopped for a drink on the way home and flown back drunk.

What she didn't expect was to receive a faceful of feathers followed by a loud cracking sound in her ears as solid muscle and bone smashed directly into her nose. She let out a loud cry of pain, dropping her candle to the floor. It reflected against a dark red puddle of wine before the wick hit it and was doused.

"Mel?" slurred a hazy voice in the darkness. She felt a tickle of feathers brushing against her, and then she heard, "Oooh. Ouch. Y'okay?" Cold fingertips brushed the edge of her nose, sending a fresh wave of pain through her, but then a warmth coursed from the point of contact and the pain stopped. "Ssssorry, didn't hear you come in."

Melanie squinted into the darkness. "Papa, are you... drunk?"

"Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

She went to take a step forward, but a hand stopped her.

"Mm. Nah, there's. Glassssss. Knocked it over with my wings, I think. Only I can't 'member how it's all meant to go back together."

Melanie was beginning to feel concerned. She'd had plenty of drinks with her father, even gotten a little silly around him from time to time, but neither of them was ever this sloppy. Either he'd flown home drunk, or he'd snuck into the cellar and been here drinking for ages. Neither was a particularly encouraging prospect.

Still, for all her concern, she had to get a barb in. "So you can't clean up some wine bottles, but you can fix my nose?"

"Well, sssss'a lot of wine an' you've only got the one nose," he replied testily. "I know what your nose ssss'meant to look like. I dunno wossssa blend an' wossss s'own bottle, right?"

She knew he could see her, so she made certain to cross her arms and give him as devastating a glare as she could muster in the direction she thought he was in. "Could you sober up? It's late, Papa. I want to know what happened."

There was a long pause. "No, Mel, come on," his voice as small as a child's. "M'not ssssobering up. I can't... Please don't make me."

Now she really was concerned. "Why don't we go upstairs? My candle's out, I can't see in here."

"Oh." There was a gentle clattering of metal and a little bit of grunting, and then all at once the room was illuminated again. He held the candle out to her silently, his eyes wide and strangely distant.

She took it. "You want to stay in here?" she asked slowly.

He nodded. He was looking straight through her.

"Okay." She did a quick gesture. The bottles reformed themselves and the spilled wine evaporated off of the floor. With the broken glass out of the way, she sat down on the cool dirt floor and set her candle down beside her.

Her father followed suit, holding his wings close to his back and then wrapping them around himself as he leaned against the shelves. "Mel, m'sorry," he said again, making full eye contact with her this time. "S'not a good look, me like this, I know."

"What happened, Papa?"

He reached over his wing and grabbed a fresh bottle off the shelf, uncorking it and taking an unpleasant-looking gulp directly out of it. "You humans," he muttered, setting it down. "I mean, the things you come up with. Tell you what, I’d be out of a job if anyone from Hell realized I hadn’t done all that.”

"Done all what?” she pressed.

He shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it. S'not for talking about, s'for forgetting." The hollow smile he gave her sent shivers down her spine. "There's a good dad lesson, eh? Here's how you sssssurvive immortality, kid: sometimes a thing happens, an' you can't do anything about it, ssssso what you do is you keep drinking until you can shut your eyes without ssssseeing it. Once you've done that you've got forever to put off thinking about it, so you jusssst don't." He paused. "Well, _I've_ got forever. _You've_ got until the End of Days. You get to go first, you lucky little bastard of mine. F'I ssssurvive the last War, that's a whole other can of worms, eh?" His hollow smile widened and he lifted his bottle to her. "Sssssee? 'Nother thing to drink an' forget. The War's not here yet, an' you're sssstill here, sssso I don't have to worry about it." He took another generous drink.

Melanie didn't know what to say to that. As far as things her father probably didn't want her knowing about, this was probably up there with all the attempts to stop her existing in the first place and the visions of Hell the scout who’d possessed Luciano had shown her when she was a girl. “Papa,” she said gently, “why don’t you go to bed?”

He shook his head. “Nuh. My mind isn’t right for sleeping. Can’t even blink without sssseeing—well. Ssss'a good job I don’t really need to blink, eh?” He stopped and, seeming to remember himself through the haze of drink, he furrowed his brow at her. “You ssssleep. M’fine, m’not going anywhere. Ssss’not like I can bloody well _do_ anything. ‘Magine me getting a commendation and going and stopping it all.” He giggled. “I’d probably get a century in the Pit for it.”

"Um. Okay," she said. "Okay. I can't—I'll try." She sighed. "Just please promise me you won't drink yourself to death, because between Luciano and whatever the hell this is I don't think I could handle that."

He stared across the room at her, more alert than he'd looked the whole night. "'Course," he said. "I promise."

Melanie didn't sleep. She tried, but all of a sudden she was seventeen again. Something was wrong with her father that she couldn't fix—he was dead and in Hell, he was too sick to leave his bed, Aziraphale was finally buckling under pressure and admitting he'd barely survived Melanie's demon trap at all—and it was her fault, all her fault.

Well, he was drunk now, not sick, but it _felt_ like a sickness. There were things going on in Papa’s head that he tried to hide from her, she knew that, and maybe he didn’t always hide it well but—this drinking, this coming apart in front of her, it was different. This was the sort of thing he'd always hinted he'd done in the fourteenth century, the sort of mess she was born out of. Whatever had happened, it was bad enough that he would rather Melanie see him at his least together than face what he’d just witnessed sober.

It wasn't her fault, she knew that, but her mind seemed all too happy to provide reasons anyway He wouldn't be in Spain if she'd been strong enough to keep the shop running with the kids, if she'd just listened to Aziraphale about Luciano at that party, if she hadn't gone back to Verona after London. The same part of her that wanted to curl up on her father's chest while he basked in the sun longed for Aziraphale's arrogant, self-assured presence. She almost prayed to him right then, but if once he sobered up Papa was going to be embarrassed about losing face around her, she couldn't imagine how much worse he'd feel if she got Aziraphale in on it.

The next morning her father was at the dining room table with some papers when she got up, and he fully dressed with his wings away, but he had another full bottle of wine by his side and was still slurring when he said, "G'morning.""Still drunk?" she asked dryly.

He gestured at the place setting of paper, ink, and a quill in front of him. "Got my report to write," he replied, as though that explained anything at all.

Melanie almost snapped at him, because it was morning now and he should have been better and this wasn't fair, but then she noticed the hand he was gesturing with was shaking and she softened. "Okay," she said. "You work on that. I'm going for a swim."

When she came in a few hours later, sun-kissed and too content with the salt-damp feeling of her skin and hair to will herself clean, she found the written report sitting on the table with her father God only knew where. A quick glance at the document told her it was going to be a slog to get through. He had written it in the infernal script Hell had developed for the language all angels shared. Phonetically it represented the same language angels spoke, but even fewer humans could read this than celestial script. Melanie was nearly fluent, of course, although like all children she had to really squint to make sense of her father’s chicken scratch.

But she did read it. Doing her best to ignore the enthusiastic tone Papa had put on for Hell’s sake, she came to a rapid understanding of her father’s current state. He wrote with what appeared to be enthusiasm about the methods of torture employed; the paranoia and betrayal fostered in the targeted communities; the perfect cocktail of greed, bigotry, and sincere religious belief that had made it all possible. That it was God's Church against God's chosen people was just the icing on the cake.

Melanie pushed past the tone and focused on the words. However cheerfully they were presented, this was what he was seeing and this was what was tearing him apart. He'd just been saying to her the other night how much he'd give to have a human's free will, and this was what they used it to do.

Maybe she should get Aziraphale to step in and thwart it. It hadn’t actually been Hell’s doing, but Hell didn’t know that and Heaven probably wouldn’t, either—unless it was the sort of thing Heaven already approved of. It was an inquisition, after all. Heaven didn’t approve of everything the Church did, but it was always possible this was a subtle part of some larger plan. Plus she knew Aziraphale’s methods, and she didn’t have much faith that they’d make a dent in the general evilness of whatever was happening. The direct approach was always Melanie’s thing back in the day, not his.

She set the report down and went to the window to look out at the gentle rolling of the sea. It had been a long, long time since Melanie had been the girl who pretended to be a demon to sneak souls away from Hell from under her father's nose. She'd put that girl away when she got her friend possessed and killed her father. She did bring her back once to get out of doing Heaven's dirty work, but then she'd thrown herself into the mundanity of running a business and supporting a family to keep herself out of dangerous situations that weren't her business. The girl she used to be would have hated that. She always loved her father, even when Hell came between them, but she'd hated the way he lived in denial and fear.

And that girl still lived in Melanie's heart somewhere, peering out and judging the woman she'd become. Too afraid of death to stay with the family she'd built for herself, too afraid of disappointing them to leave, and now her first instinct was to get Heaven involved when she knew they'd probably do about as much good as her father was allowed to. This wasn't even a thing Heaven or Hell had done, it was something humans had done and she was human. If she was still the girl she used to be, she'd be halfway to Aragon on a stolen horse by now.

Not that there was much she could do in Aragon. She didn't speak a lick of Spanish, first of all, and if Hell knew about the Inquisition there was always a chance there were demons around. What if she was caught, or they saw magic and assumed it was her father helping people out, or—?

Jesus Christ, sometime in the past eighty years she'd turned into him. It was exactly what she'd always been afraid of as a girl. Hell, looking back, her father had always been afraid she'd turn out like him, too. Because of course they were afraid of the same thing, of course they were both too paralyzed by fear now to help people who needed it. And at least his fears were immediate, tangible things. She’d seen what happened to him if he stopped bringing in souls for Hell for too long; she couldn’t imagine what would happen if he straight-up reversed something Hell was happy with.

Melanie was afraid of Hell and of Heaven, of what they could do to her family, but what did she really have to be afraid of when it came right down to it? She’d shepherded Luciano safely to a happy end at an old age, and Aziraphale had been confident he was bound for Heaven. Her father hadn’t been destroyed that night in Venice, and now he was here hurting badly because of something Melanie would have jumped at the chance to meddle in when she was younger. Maybe she risked exposing herself and her father to the forces of Hell, but Hell was always going to insert itself into human affairs.

 _Her_ affairs. That was what it had always been about. Thwarting her father, undermining Aziraphale, making sure Luciano had enough money for food and enough work that his children would never struggle like he did as a boy. Earth didn't belong to the powers of the afterlife, it belonged to the people living on it. And as someone who was going to live on it a hell of a lot longer than anyone else, intervening on behalf of other people was Melanie's right—her privilege, even—as a human being with free will.

She picked up a mostly empty bottle her father had left, drained it, and set it down neatly on the table. First thing was first, she needed a goddamn horse.

* * *

Crowley had finished his report and decided the ordeal had earned him the right to get properly pissed in the privacy of his own room. He hadn't meant to pass out, but it was a pleasant surprise to wake up still drunk having passed a few hours in restful oblivion. The sun was setting behind the hills, casting long shadows over the beach as the sea glistened blue-grey and flaming orange in the twilight.

The next few days were a bit of a blur. On the first night he came downstairs and found a note next to his report on the Inquisition that began,

_Papa,_

_I am alright, I haven’t left because I’m upset with you, but I will be away for a bit on business._ Please _be careful while I’m gone. You know how to contact me if you need me._

That opening line was written in large letters, underlined, and circled—presumably for his benefit if he hadn’t sobered up by the time he found Melanie’s message. There was a proper letter written below, probably explaining where she’d gone and why, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little relieved she’d left him alone. Better for both of them, he thought, and Melanie could take care of herself.

Eventually, he got sick of being drunk and stopped wanting to stab his eyes out when he was sober. He got halfway through the letter and immediately took off for Aragon.

It wasn’t long at all before he spotted a familiar figure driving a wagon whose contents were concealed by a heavy burlap tarp. Crowley landed in some bushes nearby, put his wings away, and stepped out onto the road.

“Melanie Crowley,” he shouted, his old scolding tone coming back.

The figure driving the cart pulled at the reigns, bringing the horse to a gentle stop. She cleared her throat. “Hola, mi hermano,” she said loudly in a painfully Italian accent.

He crossed his arms. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Melanie turned toward the back of her wagon, called out, “¡Es bien!” and then hopped down. “Seriously?” she whispered to him. “You’re mad at me?”

“I didn’t say that,” he whispered back. “Mel, have you got any idea what’s going to happen if you get caught?”

Her face was growing harder by the second. “Did you read my letter or not? I told you, I won't let Hell dictate—“

“I don’t mean Hell!” he said at full voice. “I’m more worried about the Spanish bloody Crown. I don’t care what magic you know, you haven’t got the power necessary to throw the scent off of a French-Italian woman disguised as a man traveling alone with a cart full of indeterminate cargo.”

She marched over to the cart and threw off the tarp, revealing a few bales of hay and some logs. “I have decoys, I’m not an idiot.”

“My point still stands. You’re going to get caught.”

Melanie glared at him, placing her body protectively between him and the cart. “I have to do this.”

He sighed and threw his head back. “I _know_ , Melanie. I read your letter. It was a beautiful treatise on the moral obligations that come with free will, very moving, lots of nice dramatic flairs throughout. I’m trying to make sure you don’t get these people killed.”

Her expression uncoiled itself as soon as he said it. “Really? I mean, you’re a demon, you can’t—“

“No,” he said slowly, “but we know an angel who might like to thwart a demon.”

Melanie frowned again. “I don’t really want to get Aziraphale involved. This trip, it’s about me figuring out what I want to do next, right? And I think this is what I want to do. Once these people are safe, I’m moving to Spain and doing whatever I can to stop this.”

Crowley shut his eyes and massaged his temples. “That’s a lovely sentiment, Melanie, but your principles aren’t more important than these people you’re trying to help. What, exactly, is your plan?”

“There’s a place where Jews are allowed to live in Venice,” she said. “It’s a ghetto, it’s not the best, but they’ll be left alone there and I can have Gerodi and Daniele help them get settled.”

“ _How?_ ” he wailed.

She cast her eyes aside. “I was just going to take it one day at a time. Maybe stop back at the beach house to plan.”

“Uh-huh,” said Crowley, raising an eyebrow. “And you don’t think maybe Aziraphale or I might have anything to teach you about building a network of people to help with this sort of thing? Neither of us does much work in Spain, but there may be connections of connections you can bring together if smuggling refugees is the way you want to go.”

She looked up at him. “Aren’t you worried about helping me do good?”

He smiled. “I’m the one who taught you how to thwart me in the first place, remember? I’m responsible for plenty of evil in the world—all of it, arguably. Original sin and all. If my own daughter wants to counteract that by outclassing Heaven on the goodness front, I’m happy to accept that bright spot on an otherwise terrible record.”

Finally, Melanie smiled as well. “Living vicariously, huh?”

He gave her an affectionate smack on the shoulder. “Tell Aziraphale or any of the Propizios and you’re on your own next time you cock up this badly.” Then he hopped into the driver’s seat of the wagon. “Come on then, let’s clean up your mess.”

Melanie practically ran back to her seat and took the reins in her hands. “Jesus, Pa— _Antonio_. You know how you are with animals, you’re going to scare the horse off.”

He grinned as they took off, and it came easily. It wasn't that he felt better, exactly. Humans were still awful, he was still forbidden to do anything about it, and he doubted Melanie would be able to do much more than scratch the surface of the problem no matter what they set up together. But the ability to see the bright side of things and find a way to move forward had always been the keystone of Crowley's survival strategy. It felt foreign to look at his daughter and see something he liked about himself reflected back at him, but there it was, and it was manifesting another part of himself he thought had died a long time ago.

He thought it had died in Melanie, too, snuffed out by what happened in Venice, but here it was as alive as ever. When Crowley saw what horrors humanity was capable of, his only option was to look away and try to forget it had happened. But Melanie, in spite of her grief and in spite of the terrible way he'd behaved around her, had looked proper, human evil in the face and decided she wasn't going to let it stand unchallenged no matter how few resources she had to challenge it. It was the most human sort of good there was, and he envied it, but more than anything he was thrilled that it wasn't too late for her even if it was too late for him.

 _Kids_ , he thought warmly to himself, and he folded his arms behind his head and leaned back with a contented sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: Drinking, PTSD, mentions of torture, mentions of historical anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence but nothing graphic
> 
> And that's it for, like, the first century of Melanie's life I guess! I know what things I want to write next, but they're kind of montage-y and I don't know how I want to split them up so we'll have to see what comes out of my ol' noggin. Thank you to everyone who's been keeping up with this thus far!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr at [crowleyraejepsen](https://crowleyraejepsen.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Glittering Instrument [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17620880) by [mercuryhatter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter)




End file.
